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Independent study project, zine and film series

Hunter College, Spring 2019

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This independent research project dives into the history of tenant-led housing struggles in New York City with a particular focus on using film archives and documentaries to highlight key moments and case studies when housing activism opened up new political imaginations, intersections and possibilities in the city.

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As outlined in the Direct Action Housing zine, I curated and hosted four public events in the spring of 2019 on different aspects of housing struggles documented through archival film records. This series of housing history films was a starting point and catalyst to think about the role of and for the home in struggles for the city and liberation — struggles to make home (reflecting broader practices of social reproduction) through particular time periods and intersections of the labor movement, feminism, racial justice, and more.

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Using the framework of “direct action,” this research seeks to showcase how the wide range of intersectional practices of tenant organizing and activism in the 20th century points to the potential of housing as an arena in which to contest, negotiate, intervene on, and build power. Bridging across scales, this housing activism intersects with and uplifts practices of everyday life, opening up new spaces and possibilities for social forms and relationships to the city.

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Read online + download a copy

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CIRR Residency

Christiania, Denmark

September, 2022

Infrastructures of collective care:

home-making / city-making

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The goal of this residency was to learn from and draw out lessons and principles from the decades of experimentation and community-building at Christiania and to consider how it is recreated and sustained as part of a “care-full” process and as a site of alternative and collective city-making across different scales and perspectives, especially in a “placed” and infrastructural capacity. Overall I was interested in the “social experiment” of Christiania as a place beyond individualized/privatized property ownership and capitalistic valuation but also, on a deeper level, in looking at how the specific “constructive” infrastructures and practices of everyday life and the socio-spatial relationships and literal spaces of community-building are maintained, experienced, understood and shaped collectively and over time. I think Christiania provides an important and unique space to see these processes in action and to learn from as we think about building shared places — and life —together collectively and in common that can open up new possibilities for the future.

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