Queens Residents Remind Trump Where He Comes From

Sunday November 20th, an oversized mailbox was installed in Jackson Heights’ Diversity Plaza, an invitation to Queens residents to send postcards to President-elect Donald Trump. The action, called Letters from Homewas organized by the Center for Artistic Activism as the culmination of its Arts Action Academy at the Queens Museum with SPQ alumni Sol Aramendi and current MFA Alix Camacho.

“We realized something about Queens, that it’s one of the most ethnically diverse places on Earth and it’s the [childhood] home of Donald Trump,” Stephen Duncombe, co-director of the Center for Artistic Activism, told Hyperallergic. “Here’s this person who’s talking about making America ‘great again,’ but of course the America that he came from is one of the most diverse places on Earth.”

Watch the video here!

Read the full article on Hyperallergic!

Corona Plaza: Diagram and Research Action

Over the weekend of January 12 and 13, DSGN AGNC (led by Quillian Riano) took to Corona Plaza to carry out their ‘Diagram and Research Action’, which looks to identify issues and hidden urban conflicts affecting the community of Corona, and by extension, Corona Plaza.

Here are some lovely photos by Quillian of the action at Corona Plaza:

As the DSGN AGNC site puts it:

“Each of the signs has:

  • A specific issue that acts as a boundary, keeping Corona Plaza from being used fully by the community;
  • A diagram that looks at how permeable that boundary is;
  • A description of the boundary, the agents that may help change the boundary, and a key question for each boundary;
  • Finally, each sign has a translucent architectural diagram that looks at the boundary’s affect in the spatial experience of the plaza.

All the boundaries and questions arise from research conducted in Corona. The questions are meant to give us a deeper understanding of the community. Some of the questions, like number 3, are polemical in nature and meant only to challenge assumptions some make about the neighborhood of Corona — i.e. this New York Times article: Roosevelt Avenue, a Corridor of Vice. Our goal is to advocate for and design an open plaza that caters to the entire community.”

 Here is the link to the rest of the post.

SPQ Students Participate in ‘Corona Cares for the Rockaways’ in Corona Plaza

This past weekend, SPQ MFA students participated in a QMA-led event at Corona Plaza with the objective of gathering donated materials for fellow New Yorkers in the Rockaways neighborhood of Queens. The event was a resounding success in terms of the amount of community partners that joined the cause and the contributions by community members. But it was also successful as a cultural event that got the cohort of SPQ students more deeply involved in the real life of Corona.  You can learn more about the event on the QMA events website here.

Here are some images of the event and the SPQ students at work in the Plaza:

 

 

 

Queens Chronicle: Cleaned Up Plaza Offers Cultural Programs

This article originally appeared in the Queens Chronicle website: link

Cleaned-up plaza offers cultural programs 1

Esther and Alberto Olivera dance the bolero in Corona Plaza on Oct. 21.

 

Cleaned-up plaza offers cultural programs

by David Noriega, Chronicle Contributor

Sounds of bolero music filled Corona Plaza on Oct. 22 as members of nearby senior centers danced in the sun. Throughout the afternoon, crowds gathered along the edges of the plaza to watch, some stopping midway up the stairs to the elevated subway platform on Roosevelt Avenue.

˝he event, inspired by the traditional uses of plazas in Latin American cities, was part of a larger effort by the Queens Museum of Art to turn the spot into a center of community activity in Corona. In concert with various neighborhood groups, the museum is organizing an ambitious series of public programs in the recently opened pedestrian area.

Most of these events are geared towards Corona’s immigrant residents. Some are cultural, such as dance and music performances, while others will focus on civic and political issues affecting the community, museum organizers say.

The museum is planning a festival with music, dance and art workshops for Saturday, Nov. 10, during which it will also collect donations to help the Rockaways recover from Hurricane Sandy.

Corona Plaza used to be split by a service road connecting National and 104th streets just south of Roosevelt Avenue. The roadway was plagued by trash, parked trucks and traffic. But in late August, the city Department of Transportation closed it to cars, paved it with gravel and brought in chairs and tables. Meanwhile, Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-Corona) allocated $17,000 to the Queens Museum for public programming.

At the Oct. 22 event, some 50 seniors attended the afternoon of bolero dancing, which was followed by a potluck meal and evening screenings of short films narrating immigrant experiences.

“I’ve been in Corona since ‘62, and this is the first time I’ve seen something nice and decent happen here,” Cristobalina CÈspedes, one of the seniors, said in Spanish, while sitting at a table to take a break from dancing.

Pointing to a mauve sweater she wore under a black velvet blazer, CÈspedes said this was the first day she was wearing color out of the house since her son died in a car accident a year ago.

The scene reminded Alberto and Esther Olivera, a couple who married 46 years ago, of the plazas in their native Lima, Peru, where people gathered to play guitars and dance.

“It’s a moment of relaxation for working people,” Alberto Olivera, 73, said in Spanish.

The museum has been reaching out to multiple community groups throughout Corona and neighboring areas about planning their own events and activities, according to Jose Serrano-McClain, the museum’s full-time community organizer. These include New Immigrant Community Empowerment, the Corona Youth Music Project and Drogadictos An—nimos, an Elmhurst-based drug recovery center.

In addition to encouraging these groups to use the plaza, the museum is offering to help them navigate the city’s permitting process, which can be burdensome and costly, said Prerana Reddy, director of public events for the museum.

Serrano-McClain hopes the plaza will be a salve for some of Corona’s problems. For instance, in a neighborhood composed mostly of immigrants, many of whom are undocumented, integration into community life can be difficult.

“You’re just not sure what the trust networks are yet, especially if you’re recently arrived,” said Serrano-McClain. Public events can help create “the kinds of environments that signal that you’re a little bit closer to home than you think.”

The museum’s programming has been well-received by residents. Martha Gualotuna, an immigrant from Ecuador who lives in Corona, agreed that the museum could help the community at large. She said she wants to see more events for the neighborhood’s children, since many of their parents work long hours and have little time to spend with them. Perhaps a youth talent show, she suggested.

“I have a 15-year-old daughter, and she has a beautiful voice,” Gualotuna said.

For now, the museum is testing out the space and trying to make residents comfortable with using it for more than the occasional sit-down.

Workshop at Corona Plaza by Change Administration and DSGN AGNC

 

On On September 8, 2012, architect Quilian Riano (DSGN AGNC) and city planner Aurash Khawarzad (Change Administration) led a structured conversation that began at Immigrant Movement International and ended at Corona Plaza.  Almost twenty community members and a few SPQ students participated in the conversation, which had the goal of providing Quillian and Aurash a better understanding of what challenges and opportunities the people of Corona expect with the creation of this new public space.

Both Quillian and Aurash have been commissioned by QMA under the Corona Studio program to develop programming and temporary installations on the site.  They will use participatory processes to propose and take action on ideas that provide opportunities for recreation, education, commerce, and more.

Here are some images from the workshop:

 

Corona Plaza: A Community Place Rises (Video by Streetfilms)

Check out this really exciting video and blog excerpt on Corona Plaza by Streetfilms,  which have the mission of “documenting livable streets worldwide”.

Something special is happening in Corona, Queens.

Last week, Streetfilms visited Corona Plaza — the city’s newest car-free space, next to the 103rd Street stop on the 7 train — and found it already packed with families, children, and shoppers.

This plaza has been in the works for many years, and the local community has taken ownership of it immediately. Volunteers help in locking up the tables and chairs at night and assist in cleaning the space themselves.

The area previously had no public seating whatsoever, which is astonishing considering the dozens of restaurants nearby. Now it is a magnet for people, especially kids, who give the place a vibe that feels different than most other pedestrian plazas. To watch parents sit calmly while their kids play would have been unheard of before the street was reclaimed from traffic and parking.

 

Continue reading Streetfilms’ post here.

Celebrating the New Corona Plaza!

On August 26, QMA led a community festival to celebrate the opening of the newly pedestrianized Corona Plaza.  A number of local organizations came together with an afternoon of music, dance, science, and civic action.

Here are some images from the event:

Timelapse: Creating Corona Plaza (Video by NYC Dept of Transportation)

 

And here are some other photos, by Neshi Galindo of the construction process:

Making A New Model of Corona Plaza

Over the last few weeks, students have been developing an interactive model of Corona Plaza alongside Aurash and Quillian that we will be using to engage the community in workshops at Immigrant Movement International, and at the plaza itself.

Bronze Foundry at Queens College Gets Re-ignited

Last week we had a visit from the head of the Bedi-Makky Art Foundry in Brooklyn, to give us a consultation on the dormant kiln at Queens College.   The Bedi-Makky Art Foundry is famous for making the Charging Bull on Wall Street and the Iwo Jima memorial in DC.  They are heavyweights who know a thing or two about casting in bronze.

Seth Aylmer, SPQ MFA student, organized the visit by visiting the foundry several times and pleading with the Mr. Makky to come and help us re-ignite this amazing tool at QC .  Seth is a sculptor who is interested in re-integrating the notion of the hard object and the into this work we call ‘social practice’.  He has been working on an idea for a temporary bronze sculpture for Corona Plaza.

Here is a video of the re-ignition:

And here is some of the bronze work that this man has made that you might recognize:

                     

Aurash and Quillian Make Summer Plans with SPQ Students

 

REBLOG: Social Practice Queens: Re-imagining and Re-invigorating Corona Plaza

This article was originally published by The City Atlas: New York.

Poised at the fore­front of impor­tant con­tem­po­rary social move­ments, com­mu­nity activism, tac­ti­cal urban­ism, and par­tic­i­pa­tory art pro­duc­tion, a nascent col­lab­o­ra­tion devel­ops between a cul­tural insti­tu­tion, a pub­lic uni­ver­sity, local artists, urban plan­ners, and Queens res­i­dents, to cre­atively solve local urban issues.

This past spring City Atlas met with Pre­rana Reddy, the Direc­tor of Pro­gram­ming at The Queens Museum of Art, to talk about Social Prac­tice Queens (SPQ) – a col­lab­o­ra­tion between the museum and Queens Col­lege – and the future of Corona Plaza.

The team up between two of the borough’s highly regarded insti­tu­tions began with the ques­tion of how to bring visual art stu­dents together with local res­i­dents, in order to tackle social issues par­tic­u­lar to Queens. A part­ner­ship of this nature has never before been attempted between a museum and an aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tion. Only in its early devel­op­men­tal stages, SPQ is the only edu­ca­tional pro­gram of its kind on the east coast with sim­i­lar pro­grams emerg­ing across the coun­try at insti­tu­tions like Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts and Port­land State University.

“The goal is to allow access to this type of socially rel­e­vant stu­dio art edu­ca­tion at a large diverse and afford­able urban uni­ver­sity set­ting such as CUNY (City Uni­ver­sity of New York.)”… “It gives stu­dents a space to inves­ti­gate crit­i­cal pub­lic art prac­tices, within one of the coun­tries most diverse pop­u­la­tions and immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.” – Pre­rana Reddy

For those new to the term – “social prac­tice” is an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary dis­course that links artis­tic activ­ity and pro­duc­tion with press­ing social issues related to com­mu­ni­ties, groups, or soci­eties. Typ­i­cally this type of art prac­tice is highly col­lab­o­ra­tive (often work­ing with non-artist groups) and empha­sizes process based trans­for­ma­tions (in addi­tion to) the cre­ation of an art object, arti­fact or expe­ri­ence. “Within the art mak­ing process, the prac­tice empha­sizes peo­ple in rela­tion­ships to each other and their sur­round­ings, “focus­ing on engage­ment and account­abil­ity between the audi­ence and the artist” – Jules Rochielle

SPQ stu­dents are afforded the immense resources of each of the involved insti­tu­tions, in addi­tion to con­nec­tions with out­side col­lab­o­rat­ing groups.

Cur­rently the project also involves Immi­grant Move­ment Inter­na­tional and design groups DSGNAGNC and Change Admin­is­tra­tion. Stu­dents work across dis­ci­plines and depart­ments of art and urban stud­ies at Queens Col­lege – to come up with rich strate­gies of cre­atively work­ing on social issues.

Their recent work “Corona Stu­dio: Trans­form­ing Corona Plaza” involves the research and plan­ning of future artis­tic inter­ven­tions, pub­lic instal­la­tions, and com­mu­nity pro­gram­ming for the upcom­ing rede­vel­op­ment of Corona Plaza, in Queens, New York – into a pedes­tri­an­ized area in the Sum­mer of 2012, as part of the NYCDOT pub­lic plaza pro­gram. This is in hopes of bring­ing the plaza from its cur­rent state of dis­may and dis­use into a place for recre­ation, as well a venue for the exchange of ideas, cul­ture, and commerce.

This past spring, stu­dent of the class “Trans­form­ing Corona Plaza,” suc­cess­fully com­bined urban research involv­ing the demo­graph­ics, local pol­i­tics, and con­cerns of local stake­hold­ers, with the­ory from inter­ven­tion­ist art prac­tice and prac­ti­cal design con­cepts drawn from case stud­ies of socially-engaged art. Through­out the semes­ter, stu­dents met off-campus at the Immi­grant Move­ment Inter­na­tional space where they researched and became famil­iar with the nearby Corona Plaza (103 St. and Roo­sevelt Ave.) In the process they were intro­duced to local activists, busi­ness peo­ple, local politi­cians, and the plan­ning team of the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion. Four design pro­pos­als were cre­ated by stu­dent teams and pre­sented to the com­mu­nity and a range of pro­fes­sion­als for crit­i­cal feedback.

“We wanted to envi­sion Corona as a cen­ter for for­mu­lat­ing a pro­duc­tive rather than a reduc­tive notion of glob­al­iza­tion and diversity…the heart of our project is look­ing at Corona as a lab­o­ra­tory for address­ing cer­tain dilem­mas inher­ent within the social frame­work of this net­worked era of mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism: who and what is a com­mu­nity?”- Pre­rana Reddy

Recently, The Queens Museum of Art has called upon the exper­tise of archi­tect Quil­ian Riano ofDSGN AGNC and city plan­ner Aurash Khawarzad of Change Admin­is­tra­tion to lead the process in col­lab­o­ra­tively devel­op­ing pro­gram­ming and pub­lic instal­la­tions that will cre­ate a new space for

the entire com­mu­nity – titled Corona’S Plaza.

In our dis­cus­sion with Pre­rana, she stressed how their work was more than revi­tal­iz­ing the area so it can attract tourists to the neighborhood’s already rich and diverse cul­tural col­lec­tion, but devis­ing strate­gies to ben­e­fit the exist­ing community.

“Im con­cerned for peo­ple like the con­struc­tion work­ers who have nowhere to rest on their breaks. They can’t stand on the street cor­ner or in front of busi­nesses because they would be loi­ter­ing and the children’s park is no place for them either….the pedes­trian park is a per­fect solu­tion to issues such as this. We are work­ing to have activ­i­ties such as pub­lic art pro­gram­ming and health fairs for these peo­ple who have been neglected and nor­mally don’t read­ily have access to these type of resources.”

The devel­op­ment of Corona’S Plaza will include work­shops that are designed to empower locals to design the space, encour­ag­ing max­i­mized cre­ative use of the plaza. This process involves diverse com­mu­nity mem­bers – includ­ing immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties – who are usu­ally unin­volved in the urban plan­ning process.

At the end of the day, work like SPQ pro­motes the ques­tion of what respon­si­bil­i­ties local insti­tu­tions such as muse­ums have to urban issues. As cities become an impor­tant topic of con­ver­sa­tion among more peo­ple, it appears that cul­tural insti­tu­tions are lead­ing more dia­logues about urban

stud­ies in accom­pa­ni­ment to con­tem­po­rary art and his­tory (think BMW Guggen­heim Lab and The New Museum’s Fes­ti­val of Ideas for the New City.) There is no doubt the amount of pos­i­tive change col­lab­o­ra­tions such as SPQ can accom­plish, and this project what­ever the out­come, is an amaz­ing exam­ple for future com­mu­nity and socially engaged visual art and plan­ning endeavors.

The project will be con­tin­u­ing through­out the sum­mer where 10 stu­dents will work inde­pen­dently with SPQ Res­i­dent Artists Qul­lian Riano and Aurash Khawarazad.

 

Corona Plaza: Public Input Workshop by DOT

On June 7, at the headquarters of Immigrant Movement International, the NYC Department of Transportation conducted its first public workshop surrounding the proposed pedestrianization of Corona Plaza.

The event was attended by nearly 50 community members, and a host of familiar faces in the ongoing narrative to transform Corona Plaza, including city councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, Seth Bornstein and Ricardi Calixte of Queens Economic Development Corporation, and the four SPQ MFA students.

The evening began with a short presentation by Vaidila Kungys, NYC Plaza Program Director, who contextualized the opportunity with Corona Plaza by highlighting its centrality and access to public transportation, its great retail, and the relatively low vehicle traffic of the small street which is proposed to be pedestrianized.

You can see Vaidila’s short presentation below.

Aftter Vaidila’s presentation, participants were broken out into 5 groups; each group was given a large diagram of Corona Plaza and instructed to imagine what their ideal plaza would be. There was a DOT facilitator at each table whose goal was to encourage participation and make sure everyone’s opinion was voiced. The goal of each group was not necessarily to create consensus among the group’s participants in terms of the vision for Corona Plaza, but rather to allow each individual to have a say and a chance to record their ideas on the large diagram. It is clear that DOT uses these diagrams as official records of their public workshops.

These are some snapshots of the evening that give you a sense of how the groups engaged with the activity:

The third part of the evening was a presentation by a representative from each group summing up the ideas raised in the group activity. The most important themes were: green space, lighting, waste management, children’s activities, seating, event staging, and community art.

Here is a short video showing a selection of the presentations by workshop participants, including Seth Aylmer, SPQ MFA student:

To conclude the evening, Vaidila suggested following the Corona Plaza Facebook page to see their distillation of the workshop and for other updates regarding the Plaza’s timeline.

You can find the updates here: facebook.com/coronaplaza

Update: DOT presented a proposal to make a pedestrian plaza at Corona Plaza to Queens Community Board 4, which supports the plan. To view the presentation, feel free to download the PDF directly from this link:http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-06-07-corona-plaza.pdf

Visiting Local Businesses at Corona Plaza with Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras

On May 19, Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, joined by Corona Studio artist/architect Quillian Riano and SPQ MFA student and QMA community organizer Jose Serrano-McClain, visited each of the 20+ local businesses directly surrounding Corona Plaza. The goal was to invite the merchants into the conversation surrounding Corona Plaza, with an official invitation to the June 7 workshop to be conducted by the NYC Department of Transportation.

Here are some images from that day:

Announcing the 2012-2013 Corona Studio Artists: Quillian Riano and Aurash Khawarzad

Aurash and Quillian will seek to activate Corona Plaza, as it enters its new pedestrianized phase this summer.  A key element of their projects will be to go beyond design workshops and into citizen journalism, skill-sharing, and other elements that foster thoughtful public involvement, activism, and analysis. Furthermore, the installations and programs that result will maximize use and understanding of the space by being temporary and interactive. The project will provide important data for how the space can be used and redesigned in the coming years.

 

Quillian Riano

Quillian is a designer, writer, and educator currently working out of Brooklyn, New York.  He founded and provides the vision for DSGN AGNC. He also collaborates on a variety of architectural design and research projects with other groups, including the non-profit Architecture 2030Estudio Teddy CruzArchinectPlaces Journal#lgnlgnHarvard University, and Parsons The New School for Design. The projects he works on cross disciplinary boundaries and are located in Africa, Europe and North, Central and South America.  He was born in Bogota, Colombia and received his Masters of Architecture at
Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

 

Aurash Khawarzad

Aurash is the founder of Change Administration, a studio for urban planning, urban design, and action.  For the past 7 years Aurash has been working in urban planning at planning agencies in Fairfax County, VA, the non-profit Project for Public Spaces, and has co-founded the action-planning collective DoTank. He has recently exhibited work in the US Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale, 2012 Chilean Architecture Bienal, and the Urban Prototyping Festival in San Francisco, along with teaching a summer studio course at the Strelka Institute for Architecture, Media, and Design. He is also part-time faculty within the Integrated Design Program at Parson’s the New School for Design.  Aurash has a BS in urban studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MS in urban and regional planning from Virginia Tech University.

 

COMPLETED – First SPQ Course: Transforming Corona Plaza

Social Practice Queens (SPQ) – has just completed its first interdisciplinary seminar Transforming Corona Plaza. This experiment brought together a group of graduate and undergraduate students in studio art and in urban studies and successfully merged research work involving the demographics, local politics, and concerned stake-holders of this mostly Latino region of Queens, with interventionist theory and practical design concepts drawn from case studies of socially-engaged visual art. The educational team was drawn from Queens College: Professor Maureen Connor and Gregory Sholette from Studio Art Dept., Professor Tarry Hum from Urban Studies Dept.; plus additional instructors from the Queens Museum of Art including its Director Tom Finkelpearl, and Manager of Programs Prerana Reddy.

Two dozen students met off-campus at the Immigrant Movement International space where they developed in-depth knowledge of one nearby urban site known as Corona Plaza (103 St. and Roosevelt Ave). In the process they were introduced to local community activists, business people, computer modeling experts, borough politicians, and the planning team of the Department of Transportation (DOT) . Four final proposals were generated by student teams and presented to the community for critical feedback from a range of individuals including Tania Bruguera (artist), Arturo Sanchez (Professor of Urban Planning, Cornell) and Ricardi Calixte (a Neighborhood Development Director). Documentation of these projects can be seen here: http://www.socialpracticequeens.org/projects/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other exciting news is that investigation into Corona Plaza will continue over this summer and into fall as independent study with a team of ten students working under the guidance of our newly invited Corona Studio Artists Qullian Riano and Aurash Khawarazad.

Corona City Councilmember Julissa Ferreras Visits SPQ Seminar

On April 2, SPQ got a visit from Councilmember Julissa Ferreras, who is a strong advocate for public life in Corona, and has been active on the issue of Corona Plaza.

Corona City Councilmember Julissa Ferreras

On the same day, students were introduced to Visual Imaging Technology with a session by Cark Skelton

Visiting Professor Arturo Sanchez at SPQ Seminar

Visiting guest lecturer Professor Arturo Sanchez (Community Board 3, Professor of Urban Planning, Cornell University) speaks with the Corona Plaza class about the complexities of mapping and interpreting ethnic immigration into the neighborhood:

 

Corona Plaza Field Trip #2

These  images are fragments of documentation from a day ‘in the field’ by the four MFA students participating in the class called Corona Studio: Transforming Corona Plaza.

Sol Aramendi, Barrie Cline, Seth Aylmer, and Jose Serrano-McClain ventured to Corona Plaza earlier this week to listen to what the people of Corona desire of their plaza.   Our approach to ‘listening’ was a mixture of things.  We used an ‘interview tool’ developed collaboratively by the faculty and students of the class, alongside a “story map” activity that encouraged adults and children to share a story about Corona Plaza and mark it on a blueprint of the current plaza, an approach motivated by a recent visit to the class by Dylan House of the Hester Street Collaborative from their People Make Parks toolkit.  We approached several groups of ‘Mudanzas’ (moving van) workers and asked their opinion of the plans to pedestrianize the parking lot where their business has been anchored for years.  And we topped off every conversation with a question based on a potential temporary sculptural installation idea of representing famous animals from their home countries.

Listening to the over 20 people that we spoke to that day was illuminating.   There was real creative input coming from the actual stakeholders of the re-design of the plaza, and we got a much better understanding of the plight of the Mudanzas men, an issue that has been talked about as one of the most challenging aspects of this transformation.  The findings from the field trip by the four SPQ students will be presented to the rest of the students during class next week.

 

Prepping for Corona Stakeholder Interviews

 

Jose Luis Serrano-McClain discussing Corona Stakeholders

Students Seth Pollack and Joanna Santana practice Interview methods with special guest Valeria Treves, Director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment.

Corona Plaza Field Trip # 1

These are some images from the first field trip of the class “Transforming Corona Plaza” that is taking place at Immigrant Movement International this semester.

 

 

 

First Day of First SPQ Seminar!

On January 30,  the first SPQ seminar, “Corona Studio: Transforming Corona Plaza” convened at Queens College.  It brought together students from both the Art Department and the Urban Studies Department.  The students were introduced to their 5 faculty members and told they would be meeting in the Corona neighborhood of Queens from now!