This 18-month (January 2015-May 2016) urban research project brings together students in New York and Buenos Aires to examine how urban arts and politics intersect in the Americas: How are art and politics understood and expressed differently and similarly in these two American metropolises and why? How do shared aesthetic features of public art in the city reflect the global circulation of urban creative modes? What do we learn about local politics from looking at the art and writing on a city’s public spaces? Teams of students in both cities conduct field work in selected neighborhoods to create an archive of murals, graffiti, performances, and installations. Then, drawing from readings in history, art criticism, and urban studies, as well as from census and electoral data and using GIS technology, we analyze how social and political processes like gentrification, inequality, and planning generate and reflect creative political expression as captured in our database, culminating in transnational, collaborative projects that explore what the art and writing of city streets reveals about urban life in 21st century America.
About the Project
Centro/Houston St
The Buenos Aires Centro (downtown) is the political heartbeat of the city, and the nation, where porteños and bonaerenses have for over a century congregated to praise, protest, and pressure governments of varied stripes. Houston Street traverses a diverse cross-section of residential, commercial, and artistic neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan. In both, public art predominates, exposing vibrant – and sometimes contentious – urban histories proper to each city.
Chelsea/E. Harlem
Chelsea and East Harlem cut striking contrasts. Where one was once an industrial and working class hub and is now a high-end arts, housing, and tourist destination, the other has for decades been identified with working class Latino migrant communities, only recently experiencing the reach of gentrification. These differences – but also some significant similarities – are dramatically captured in the public art of each neighborhood.
Colegiales/Brooklyn
Colegiales in northwest Buenos Aires is an otherwise quiet residential neighborhood of parks, houses, and low-rise residences that has become a global mecca of strikingly original street art. On the streets above Brooklyn’s L subway line, encountering the borough’s public art is like excavating the area’s history in real time, from gritty East New York to gentrifying Bushwick to trendy Williamsburg.
San Telmo/LES
San Telmo near downtown Buenos Aires and the Lower East Side in Manhattan – Loisaida north of Houston St and Chinatown south of Houston – share much in common: waves of early 20th century working class European migration, followed by decades of decay, and recently turned artistic and entertainment hubs where nevertheless a gritty edge remains visible to anyone paying close attention, much of it found in each neighborhood’s public art.