About the Project

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.