James Reeves and I have come up with a new project called The Important Project that addresses political issues through research, writing, and design. Right now we think elections, chalkboards, and people are important. This may change. Check it out, read about important things, and add your thoughts to fun surveys and polls!

At first I passed by the photo of the fat man throwing punches and thought it was just an awesome anomaly, and then I saw there were more artsy boxes throughout Helsinki. I couldn’t find any online info on it, but my friend Tiina translated the labels and it’s some kind of partnership between the energy company and an art organization to turn those drab gray electric boxes into public art canvases. Neat!

The other day I hung out with my friend Jesse Shapins, who co-created the cool personal-story-sharing-through-mobile-technology public art project Yellow Arrow, which inspired my local-history-sharing-through-mobile-technology public art project Cripplebush Ghost Tour. He’s currently getting his PhD in History and Theory of Urbanism and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard and just finished teaching an interesting course at Columbia called Critical Urban Media Arts. Students combined urban theory, social media, and psychogeography to create SMS-based walking tours of specific areas in NYC. Another cool way of using cell phones to share experiences and explore the city!

During the past month in Global Studio in Johannesburg, I’ve been working with the non-profit Diepsloot Community News to help improve ways residents can communicate within the township of Diepsloot. Inspired by a community chalkboard model in Liberia, we installed a local community chalkboard so residents can have an accessible platform, share info on a daily basis, self-organize, and empower each other through local knowledge. And it’s cheap to boot! I want one in my neighborhood! Learn more here!

If you’re venturing out to Governors Island in the next few weeks, you should check out my Pedestrian Timeline! It’s part of the Figment public art event on Governors Island June 27-29. Landmark events in the island’s past are stenciled with temporary spray chalk directly onto the ground so you can get your walk on and your learn on at the same time. Did you know squirrels didn’t arrive until 1931? That’s right. Learn more here!

All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

I took down my Post-it note installation I’ve Lived in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn (more images on Flickr). I didn’t know what to expect from it all so it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and a week’s worth of time, and 2) people responded! After one week, 151 notes were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less - a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146. (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720. Some other interesting responses:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs - $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr - $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs - $1000 (”w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs - $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs - $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs - $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs - $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs - $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs - $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC response) for 1 wk - $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs depending on the number of years people have lived in their apartment:

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. I printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now I see that I still botched the wording - most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who I met while tending to the project - one guy has lived in a 2-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him a mere $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know my old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble” (agreed, ha). And a woman named Deborah bought 3 homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

Art Trucks, Yonkers, NY. City garbage trucks covered with different artist-designed wraps.

All Together Now by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, Denver, CO. Big lego-like bench wall in formerly drab area.

For the Capitol by Jenny Holzer, Washington DC. Text from bipartisan politicians projected over the Potomac River.

I went to the Americans for the Arts Convention in Philadelphia to meet public artist Jack Mackie. He introduced me to a ton of cool people and we watched a presentation of selected best works from last year (the three above were my favorites). I also got to see him present some of his first small-scale projects before becoming a big hot shot in public transportation projects:

He and Buster Simpson initiated some inspiring projects in their own under-served neighborhood in Seattle. Given the opportunity to plant some trees, they staggered them on the sidewalk so that they became more spatial and doubled as the community’s only park. They also selected bright-colored trees to mark the bus stop and serve as a cheerful canopy at the end of winter. Existing building remnants were hauled out and arranged into much-needed outdoor benches. And to counteract the prevalence of public urination, they dug a hole into the sidewalk and set up a portable restroom. Once the ground reached critical mass (hee), they planted a tree and moved on to another space. Creative ways that resourceful thinking and small interventions can make a positive impact on the community!

I’m excited to head out to Johannesburg next week to be a part of Global Studio for the third year! While I was getting my Masters degree in urban planning at Columbia University, I had the opportunity to participate in the program, where international interdisciplinary students, academics, and professionals come together to collaborate on community-based projects. Informed by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the program promotes forms of education and practice that will benefit under-served communities and facilitate bottom-up, collaborative partnerships. I love the program so much that I’m a bonafide lifer and help guide work and develop materials as a Project Associate.

While the month-long program has moved to different cities each year in the past, this year we’ll be returning to Johannesburg, South Africa again to continue various projects on housing, the environment, the arts, and information. We’ll be continuing our collaborative work with residents in Diepsloot (“DEEP-sloot”), a northern township that is one of the fastest growing areas in the City. There are around 100,000 residents, many live in shacks, and access to basic services like sewage and running water are limited. After talking with residents, community groups, and local government last year, a team developed around the topic of information. There is a strong local desire to improve information-sharing within the community.

Last year we conducted a community survey to learn more about how people currently get their information and how they would like to receive information. Based on 225 responses, 88% of people read newspapers, 84% own radios, and both mediums were wanted as news sources at the local scale. Since then, local resident Bongani Baloyi formed a non-profit organization called Diepsloot Community News that seeks to be an umbrella organization for local communication. The creation of DCN was instigated by an incident in June 2007 when a child went missing in Diepsloot. While she was found safely two days later only a few blocks from her home, the episode brought to light the lack of comprehensive communication infrastructure in Diepsloot.

This is where we are as we begin our program this year. There’s a lot of potential in many mediums, including a newspaper, radio station, SMS cell phone technology, and community chalkboards. Project development will really take more shape once we’re on the ground collaborating with Diepsloot Community News and discussing needs and interests with community members. It will also depend on the skills of the team, whose backgrounds will mostly be in architecture and urban planning. In the end, we hope to learn a lot from the people in Diepsloot and help them develop a better information-sharing system to facilitate transparency and harness the great amount of local knowledge and resources within the community.

I’m back from Asia and rolling right into some public art action. I’m proud to be part of Windows Brooklyn, a community exhibit pairing artists with storefront windows in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens neighborhoods June 14-22. My storefront: vintage furniture shop Yesterday’s News at 428 Court Street at 2nd Place (which happens to be right around the corner from where I used to live).

It’s a question every New Yorker wonders – how much is my neighbor paying for their apartment? I’ve Lived is an interactive installation that helps demystify the topic by inviting local residents and other passers-by to share information about their living situation. Inspired by Illegal Art’s Post-it note installation, this project covers a storefront window with Post-it notes stamped with specific fill-in-the-blank forms. Passers-by can fill in a note with their own apartment information and balk at the high and low numbers paid by others. By the end of the week, the window will have transformed into a useful collection of personal notes created by and relevant to the community, as well as serve as a reflection of changing real estate. Local knowledge shared via office staples! Big thanks to Kay Cheng (above) for helping me install it! See more pictures of the project here.

For a place where real estate is king, New York City sure knows how to take the paradise out of islands… Riker’s Island is home to one of the largest prisons. Randall’s Island is home to a mental hospital and sewer treatment plant. Hart Island is home to the City’s cemetary for unclaimed bodies. And Roosevelt Island is home to depressing architecture and the horror film Dark Water. Welcome to our Bahamas!

Only one island stands apart from this sad crowd. Even though its history is wrapped up in war, Governors Island is a bucolic wonderland. Green with big trees and streets named Comfort, it’s wholesome and full of exciting potential now that the City has chosen a future public park design for the former military base. Last summer I visited the Island for the first time during the public art event Figment. They’re having it again June 27-29 and the open call for art is out until June 1. Bring your comfort art or just bring your good self to NYC’s closest thing to island fun. Shabba!