Meet Hatuey and Elizabeth! / Photo: Patrick Wall

Elizabeth Hamby and Hatuey Ramos Fermín are people connectors. As artists, activists, and Bronxites, their creative collaborations are all about gathering information from neighbors and presenting it in ways that allow communities to better understand themselves and the urban spaces they create. The two have worked in all kinds of public spaces, from major thoroughfares and street corners to laundromats, grocery stores, and vacant waterfronts.

Recently, they organized Boogie Down Rides: Bicycling is Art. The artists used the social act of biking as a springboard for talking with people about the creation of healthy, active urban environments. Throughout the month of May 2012, they set up many different formats for engaging the public: a temporary bike shop that simultaneously served as an education hub, group rides across the Bronx, and visioning workshops about biking and greenway initiatives in the city.

The project was organized as part of the public art exhibition, This Side of Paradise, by No Longer Empty at the Andrew Freedman Home. I recently sat down with Hatuey and Elizabeth to talk about Boogie Down Rides and the other urban projects they have in the works.

What was it about your community that inspired Boogie Down Rides? Was there a particular need that you were responding to or wanted to address?

Hatuey: Boogie Down Rides grew out of another project of mine, Transmit-Transit. It explored the idea of taxi drivers as a mode of transport in the the Bronx, and the need for cabs to move around. Public transit in the north-south direction works well but east-west not so much. No Longer Empty first approached me about that transportation project, which became a video installation at the Andrew Freedman Home that connected the gallery space to the outside world. Then we began thinking about how to physically and conceptually expand transportation within the community. Transportation was a major theme extending back to Mr. Freedman’s time, with Mr. Freedman being a major backer of the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), New York City’s original underground subway. The IRT addressed the linking of open space from Central Park to Van Cortlandt Park. Extending the idea of Transmit-Transit beyond cabs, we wanted to look at bikes as another viable option to address mobility in the Bronx.

One of the great things about Boogie Down Rides is how it brings together many activities that people may not normally associate but which all contribute to healthy places. Your tagline, for example, is Bicycling is Art. Can you explain how biking, public art, and urban spaces are linked in your project?

Elizabeth: Instead of representing reality as a painting, we live it on a bike. The bike embodied action for this issue of transportation in the Bronx, where biking is a social act and a political act. Instead of designing a solution to a problem, we tried to figure out the questions that exist in real life through the experience of biking. We both live in the Bronx. It’s part of our day-to-day reality, and because we’re artists, we have a compulsion to make what we see public.

The project also involved community visioning sessions for the Bronx’s longer-term development. What came out of these sessions?

Elizabeth: The visioning sessions were really spearheaded by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which was just launching an interactive toolkit to gather data and address threats to active transportation and public space. They were key in leading some of the concrete visioning work happening around the Sheridan Expressway, where dangerous connections make it unsafe to bike between the parks. Rather than focusing on cause and effect, the visioning sessions were about figuring out opportunities for improvement. Safety—specifically, feeling safe in public—was an ongoing theme in the conversations we had with our neighbors.

Bronxites show some love for their bikes at a Boogie Down Rides event / Photo: Boogie Down Rides

Throughout your various interactions with the public, did you come across questions or reactions that particularly surprised you?

Elizabeth: One of the most surprising things that we learned from Boogie Down Rides was the number of adults—particularly women—who had never learned how to ride a bike, and who were very excited to find out about opportunities for biking in the Bronx. In the instance of another project, Mind the Gap/La Brecha, we talked a lot with folks in our neighborhood about their ideas for the waterfront. One of the critical components to the waterfront that came up over and over again was the basic need for clean public restrooms!

Collaboration seems integral to your work. What other community partners were vested in Boogie Down Rides?

Hatuey: Conversations and collaborations were important from the start; we worked with Transportation Alternatives, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Bronx River Alliance, Bike the Bronx, Bronx Health REACH, Partnership for Parks, Velo City…

Elizabeth: We also had a meeting with City Planning and the Mayor’s Office where we were able to show our recommendations. It was perhaps an unusual case in that the Mayor’s Office and City Planning came to us. Our collaborations really grew organically, and our project was timely in terms of how they related to conversations already happening in New York about biking, complete streets, and the South Bronx Greenway Plan.

And did people express any misconceptions that you were able to address through these collaborations?

Elizabeth: I think that artists working in public the way that we do are often confused with non-profit or other community-based organizations. We often talk to people about the role that artists play as citizens and neighbors in our communities—and the ways that we hope that our work can help make our neighborhoods more safe, lively, and liveable.

Any advice you would give to communities who are trying to build healthier places?

Elizabeth: You have to remember the factor of critical mass. If you notice a problem, someone else probably has too, so it becomes about working together in a long-term way.

Hatuey: It’s realizing there are already resources within the community, and that becomes the main point of departure. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel. You want to create space to bring stakeholders together.

Elizabeth: Also humility and willingness to listen and genuinely collaborate—those are really important, in regard to attitude. There’s a lot of work that goes into working together.

Hatuey: Listening is the biggest thing, listening with a big ear.

Wanna go for a walk? / Photo: JaneJacobsWalk.org

The annual Jane’s Walk Weekend is just around the corner! On Saturday, May 5th, and Sunday, May 6th, hundreds of free walking tours will take place in cities around the world. We were going to try to round up the best walks for people interested in Placemaking but, perhaps unsurprisingly given that Jane was the doyenne of human-scaled urbanism, it’s pretty much impossible to find a tour that isn’t great in that regard. Instead, we sifted through all of the listings to find some of the most original and offbeat tours on the roster.

We highly encourage you to visit the two main websites with listings of walks around the world, JaneJacobsWalk.org and JanesWalk.net, to see what’s going on in your city or town, whether it involves unicycles and ugly houses, or a good old fashioned exploration of the history, people, and architecture of a unique place.

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City of Labyrinths Project (Toronto, Ontario)
Toronto, where Jane lived during the latter half of her life, will be the setting for more walks than any other city during the weekend; still, several stand out. This walk ont he 5th, organized by a group that aims “to place a semi-permanent labyrinth within walking distance of every Torontonian,” celebrates the city’s existing sidewalk mazes, and explores the history of labyrinth design.

Cityscape/Soundscape (Toronto, Ontario)
Most walking tours tend to rely more on what we see than what we hear, but Toronto will play host to a “soundwalk” on the 5th. This tour will “show how Toronto’s diverse downtown spaces can be distinguished by their own characteristic soundscapes.” Sounds cool enough already, but take a look at the photo–it seems this walk will even include blindfolds to heighten your hearing!

Food Foraging (Flesherton, Ontario)
For a thoroughly rural ramble (say that five times fast), head to Flesherton on the 6th to learn all about what can and can’t be eaten during a walk in the woods. Organizer David Turner “will also point out plants, roots, barks and leaves that can be used for tinctures, salves and teas.”

IRUBNY Celebrates Gramercy Park (New York, New York)
Artist Carol Caputo will lead participants in New York on a walk around Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood on the 5th, armed with paper and crayons to create rubbings of the architectural details that define this historic district.

Levee Disaster Bike Tour (New Orleans, Louisiana)
Led by an organization lobbying for safer levees to protect New Orleans (sad that we even need sustained advocacy for that), this bike tour on the 6th will visit the sites of two levee breaches that flooded the Crescent City shortly after Hurricane Katrina blew through town.

Not a Cakewalk (Toronto, Ontario)
There are a number of food-related tours scheduled during the weekend, but only one will focus specifically on the design of bakeries, and “illuminates the relationship between emotions and desire with architecture.” The walk will take place in Toronto’s West End neighborhood on the 5th.

Seersucker Ride (Sacramento, California)
If you’re the kind of person who regrets not being born during the Victorian Era, you’re in luck! On the 6th, the group Sacramento Tweed will lead an olde-fashioned bike tour of the historic city core “that encourages period dress and a more relaxed style of riding.”

Silent Midnight Walk (Regina, Saskatchewan)
If the Cityscape/Soundscape walk in Toronto sounded fun but a bit too easterly, you can experience another soundwalk in Regina on the evening of the 5th. During this one-hour traipse, “participants may choose to practice walking meditation or to simply allow their senses to take over.” Tranquil or spooky, depending on your perspective, it certainly sounds like an interesting experience!

Ugly Houses (Karlskrona, Sweden)
There’s not much information available about this walk on the website, but the title suggests that, if you happen to be in Karlskrona on the 6th, this walk has potential to be very entertaining!

Unicycling for Change (Bozeman, Montana)
While Jane’s Walk Weekend will feature several biking tours, we only found one that will be conducted via unicycle! If you’re a fan of transportation of the one-wheeled variety, head out to Montana on the 5th to help promote the cause! (Don’t worry, the route includes several breaks for weary legs).

All Photos: JaneJacobsWalk.org

Richard Serra

An enormous blinking eye stared down from the underside of a long-unused water tower. People disembarking from the NY Waterway Ferry were greeted by a soothing but slightly suspicious voice purring, “Hey, you….” Buskers performed under a twinkling canopy of sound-responsive light bulbs suspended from the 50-foot ceiling of a turn-of-the-century factory. Dozens of other projections and installations brought beauty, surprise, and a sense of community to a long-dormant area of post-industrial decay.

Bring to Light: Nuit Blanche New York 2011 from Nuit Blanche New York on Vimeo.

Bring to Light is an annual free public art event, an immersive nighttime spectacle on New York City’s waterfront that presents site-specific installations of light, sound, performance, and projection art. Occurring simultaneously with Nuit Blanche events in cities around the world, Bring to Light (now in its second year) activates underutilized spaces, creates imaginative outlets for civic engagement, and reconfigures public space to showcase possibilities for change.

The festival, which is co-curated by PPS’s Ken Farmer, lives on beyond this ephemeral evening of illumination. Organizers advocate for increased public space accessibility on the Brooklyn waterfront, work to reinvigorate historic warehouse spaces for public programming, and seek to expand the audience for this contemporary art platform.

At the intersection of art and activism, events like Bring to Light challenge visitors to reimagine the potential of their public spaces. Just as pop-up parks can transform abandoned lots into convivial gathering spots, Bring to Light illuminates the potential of underutilized areas and neglected historic structures, inviting people to imagine them as reanimated places.

A core element of Bring to Light’s mission is improving public accessibility and activating underutilized portions of the waterfront. New York, like cities around the world, is in the midst of rediscovering its waterfront. Mayor Mike Bloomberg refers to the waterfront as the city’s sixth borough — a frontier for which Bring to Light envisions a more imaginative future.

A panel at the New Museum called “Illuminating the City: Site-Specific Art as Urban Activator,” explored this potential through the eyes of curators, architects and city officials. When asked about the city’s perspective on events like Bring to Light at that panel, Stephanie Thayer, NYC Parks Department supervisor for North Brookyln and Executive Director of the Open Space Alliance, had this to say:

“Our waterfront is private factories — abandoned and working — where the entire neighborhood is denied access,” said Thayer. “The city’s long-term vision is to create a public esplanade and piers, as promised with the 2005 rezoning. In the meantime, the community is cut off from that waterfront…. Bring to Light brought our neighborhood into these very private spaces, creating a sense of adventure and ‘lighting up’ spaces that are in the dark for our neighborhood.

“More than that, they pushed through a lot of very challenging barriers. For example, we have been fighting with developers since 2004 to create public access on the India/Java street waterfront. Bring to Light wanted to activate this space for the event, which I felt was impossible on their timeline. But they were committed to making this happen, and after negotiating what needed to be negotiated, they were out there with shovels and rakes themselves — physically making it happen….

“The neighborhood is surrounded on two sides by waterfront but has very little access. Bring to Light was able to blow that open for everybody.”

Discussing the future of the BMW Guggenheim Lab space, in that space on October 12. Photo: Ken Farmer

The whole time the lab was open, people in the neighborhood and around the city were dreaming and planning about what would happen to the space after the lab’s scheduled departure on Oct.16 (it’s headed next for Berlin, then Mumbai and six other cities around the world). On Oct. 12, PPS partnered with First Street Green, a local neighborhood group, to host an event at the lab that looked to the future of what was once a rat-infested vacant lot.

First Street Green was in the mix throughout the lab’s tenure in the space, and led a full day of programming in September that included a “visioning wall” where community members could share their ideas.

Now the visioning wall will be back on display at the first event scheduled for the space since the lab left town. First Street Green is hosting an event billed as a “Holiday Wrap Up” at what is now called the First Park Art Park on Saturday, Dec. 10, from 2-5 p.m. They’ll be presenting some of the data they collected at the lab and encouraging attendees to create a “wishing wall” by attaching strips of fabric with wishes on them to a chain-link fence at the site.

This is just a precursor to full-fledged events that will be happening next spring, but if you’re interested in building the future of this innovative urban space, you should definitely make time to be there.