Victorian Stroll

The Victorian Stroll is a yearly street festival held in the downtown district of Troy, NY. At this festival members of the city council and the community at large dress up in Victorian era costumes and walk about the town. This festival along with the donning of the costumes by city council members is meant to recall a by gone era of Trojan history.... unfortunately, it seems as though some people from Troy's history did not make the cut. The vast majority of the population of Troy during Victorian times was comprised of workers. Troy the site of several iron and textile mills. It is also the site of some of the most important labor struggles and labor victories, including the location of the first women's union. So with all this incredible radical history why is it that the only representations we see during the Victorian Stroll are those of the wealthy, Uncle Sam, and Santa Clause?

In response to this absence of representation a local group of artists executed an intervention in which they and a group of about 40 people dressed up as Victorian era workers. As part of the intervention the group formed a union called the "United Victorian Workers" and combed the streets of Troy handing out buttons and urging festival goers to join the union. The artists also produced a broadsheet titled, "The Troy Worker", and handed out hundreds of copies to passersby. The broadsheet included historical documents and articles telling of the exploitation of workers during Victorian times along with ways they came together and organized to overcome this oppression.

The intervention concluded with a march through town in which the United Victorian Workers chanted slogans and sang labor songs. The march stopped for some time at the center of the festival where some union members gave dramatic speeches representing real historical figures of Troy's Labor history.

Reclaim Columbus Day

-Banner at Columbus Monument-

The Reclaim Columbus Day Event took place on Monday 9th of October 2006. This public intervention involved the seizing of Columbus Square on Columbus Day for the purpose of celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ resistance. A 24ft banner was placed across one side of the square that read “Celebrate Indigenous Peoples Resistance.” Stalks of corn were placed around the perimeter of the Columbus monument to honor of the original name of Troy (Pa-an Pa-ak, field of standing corn). The Columbus monument, located in the center of the square, is shaped to resemble a boat. A flag was hung of one end of the monument depicting the Mohican Many Trails symbol. This symbol stands in remembrance of the forced removal of the Mohicans from this land and the many trails they had to travel and endure before they arrived at would become their new home in Wisconsin. Informational posters on both the Mohicans and a counter narrative to Columbus hung along opposite sides of the monument. A brochure, which included the information on the posters, was also available for people to take home with them. The event was also catered and had a DJ. This intervention was meant to create an event that contested the traditional narrative of Columbus and brought to the forefront the history of the First People of this land.

-A small crowd gathers-

-Pa-an Pa-ak,"Field of standing corn," was what the Mohicans called this land-

Magnet Project

-Harriet Tubman replaces Uncle Sam-

The basic premise of the project was to replace the iconography of Uncle Sam present on the Times Union Newspaper dispensers with that of Harriet Tubman. The image of Uncle Sam is ubiquitous throughout the city since Troy is the home of the fictitious character "Uncle Sam."

Images of Harriet Tubman were affixed to large pieces of magnet vinyl and the magnets were then stuck to various newspaper dispensers in downtown Troy, NY.

Thresholds

-Threshold at Adams Street and 3rd Street-

-Threshold at Adams Street and 3rd Street-

"Thresholds" explores the invisible (sometimes not so invisible) boundaries that exist in urban spaces which separate the wealthy from the working class and poor and white people from People of Color.

To further illustrate this notion of thresholds in the city landscape a description of walking down a few blocks of downtown Troy, NY follows:

For example, a subtle boundary runs down the intersection of Third Street and Fulton Street to State Street. A person walking down Third Street from Fulton to State will find many different kinds of shops with people coming in and out and cafes with outdoor seating where people are hanging out. Upon crossing State Street the scene changes immediately, it becomes strangely more desolate. Except for the occasional congregation of homeless people and the elderly this half a block of Third Street between State and Congress Streets is empty. It’s not over yet, keep walking past the church and the boarded up building, past the parking lot and once again the scene changes. The street is bustling again as it was a block back. People are waiting for the bus, they are walking in and out of the unusually high concentration of convenience stores and mini markets, people are drinking coffee at the corner coffee shop, but it’s a different group of people then it was a block ago. The intersection of Third and Congress Streets is dominated by People of Color while a block before the people at the coffee shop and walking in and out of the pharmacy were mostly white. What happens in that strange half a block space between State and Congress where things get quiet? What happens in that quiet space of parking lots, abandoned building and single use buildings that stops the flow of people and keeps them separated?

Another boundary, this one being a rapid shift one, is the very small space that exists between the Washington Park neighborhood and the neighborhood known mostly as South Troy. This very small space of transition is a street called Adams. It is amazing how quickly things change. You walk past the park and see the renovated old mansions that surround the park which sits manicured, empty, and silent being watched only by windows. You walk through this neighborhood and do not see and single person. Everyone is inside I suppose. Keep walking up Third Street past the mansions and their carriage houses until you reach Adams Street and you are already in a different place. There are no more trees; the whole scene opens up to desolate looking houses in disrepair, there’s suddenly trash collecting at the curb, and there are people outside fixing their cars, there are children playing in the alleys. You can hear the chatter and the yelling from inside the houses to the people outside. You have crossed one street and the whole scene has effectively changed; architecturally this neighborhood is more rundown but people also seem to live here unlike the previous neighborhood where you could have been walking through a movie set, a street scene of trompe l’oeil facades with no one inside the houses, just a few sticks holding the scene up.
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Further exploration of the city as being striated by boundaries show that census data matched the experience described above almost precisely. Where the description explains a feeling of a shift in the city from simply experiencing it, the census data mirrored those shifts in its files and maps containing data on per capita income. On the census maps Adams Street is actually a border between one income bracket and another.

As a way of demarcating these boundaries in physical space a group of artists erected two free standing doors at the intersections between Second and Third and Adams Streets. The doors opened and closed like normal doors and sat in the middle of the sidewalk so people could walk through them. The doors had text on them which read, “I heard this was a good neighborhood on the side that would be approaching Washington Park if you were coming from South Troy. On the opposite side the text read “I heard this was a bad neighborhood.”

The city is striated with different thresholds that function as invisible borders throughout the city, thresholds whose permeability changes depending on your relationship to the space and other oppressive forces in our society such as binary gender identity, race, and class. Some people can cross these thresholds without a problem. Sometimes people from one side of the threshold can cross it without consequence yet when it is crossed in the other direction people are eyed suspiciously and they obviously “don’t belong.” These threshold/boundaries are very real manifestations of power that affect the flow and feel of the city though they themselves are invisible. Users of space see and sense the shift in the city landscape but they do not fully recognize they have passed from one space to the other. This intervention made that shift obvious in order to generate a discussion about the larger issues at play in space. Issues dealing with race and class and the greater social context as they manifest themselves through built space and script the scene.

We Were Here

-Detail of billboards-

“We Were Here” was a billboarding project that used existing advertising space as a surface upon which to tell contested histories.

In an effort to reclaim some of that advertising space back to Troy and Troy issues two billboards where put up, one of Harriet Tubman and a second of Henry Highland Garnet. Each billboard featured head shot of one of them and corresponding quote. The billboards were put up on Fourth Street in South Troy. They were up for a little over a month after which the entire billboard structure was removed and the space was left advertising free.

-Installation-

-Harriet Tubman billboard-

Guerrilla Land Marking

Guerrilla Land Marking is the title of a series of interventions meant to fill gaps of recognition within the monumental space of the city of Troy. Guerrilla Land Marking is the practice of inserting land marks in the public space of the city. The b.l.o.c.(2) collective performed a series of interventions to bring forward forgotten and omitted narratives of Troy's history. b.l.oc.(2) put up three in landmarks: Harriet Tubman, Indigenous people's Resistance, and Washington Square Park. These land marks were placed as a way to enter into a spatial discourse on the reasons why the narratives of people of color, women, the poor, and working class people in resistance to the violence of capitalism and the state are often disappeared from public memory.

The Harriet Tubman landmark was placed on the northwest corner of First and State streets. This was the site at which Harriet Tubman, with help of local citizens, was able to free Charles Nalle, an escaped slave, from local and federal authorities who aimed to return him to slavery in Virginia. A plaque commemorate this event was present at this site but it failed to mention Harriet Tubman and her and companions heroic efforts to save Charles Nalle.

Here is a newspaper account printed at the time of the rescue:

The scene became instantaneously one of great excitement. The moment the officers reached the sidewalk, they were surrounded by the crowd, the inner circle of which was composed of resolute colored men who at once began a vigorous attempt to rescue the prisoner. The city policemen were soon separated from the other officers, and left fighting promiscuously in the midst of a crowd perhaps of two thousand persons, who were swaying to and fro like billows, shouting, laughing, swearing, and fighting. Near the corner of State and First Streets, Deputy Upham was torn from the prisoner, while Marshal Holmes was allowed by mistake to proceed with the prisoner as far as Congress Street. The rescuers, perceiving that the prisoner was not with Deputy Upham, overtook Marshal Holmes, who had him in charge, when the fight was renewed with much bitterness. At this juncture, the most conspicuous person was the old colored woman, who was continually exclaiming, ‘Give us liberty or give us death,’ and with vehement gesticulations urging on the rescuers. Here the scene became intensely exciting. Revolvers were drawn, knives brandished, colored women rushed into the thickest of the fray, the venerable Moll Pitcher of the occasion was fighting like a demon, and the friends of Nalle closing upon the officers, fearless and unterrified. The Deputy and the Marshal, maimed by blows from clubs, chisels, and other weapons, were forced to abandon the prisoner; and shortly afterward Chief Quinn was also compelled to release his hold upon Nalle. Then two picked men seized the prisoner, and ran down with him to the foot of Washington Street, where Nalle jumped upon the ferryboat and was carried over to West Troy. On his arrival on the opposite side of the river, Nalle started to run up Broadway, but soon was captured and taken up into the second story of a brick building, near the ferry dock. Ten minutes had hardly elapsed before the steam ferryboat, which had been taken by storm, landed about three hundred of the rescuers at West Troy, among them the ubiquitous Moll Pitcher. The building was stoned, and the crowd, rushing up into the room under a fire from the revolvers of the West Troy officers, seized the prisoner and escaped with him from the building. Nalle, with his devoted friends, fled down Broadway, closely followed by the crowd, and when near the Arsenal wall, was placed in a wagon and driven off westward on the Shaker Road. Thus ended the Rescue.”
-Troy Daily Times 1860


This is what an official Land Mark looks like:




This is the plaque for Charles Nalle:


This is the b.l.o.c.(2) Harriet Tubman intervention:


This is the insert of the Harriet Tubman landmark:

Front page of The Record (Local Newspaper):


The Harriet Tubman Landmark was up for almost a year from late fall of 2004 to early fall of 2005. The landmark was official looking enough to be consumed by regular users of the space as sanctioned information and also to be ignored by the authorities who would eventually have it removed.

Columbus Landmark:

Another land mark intervention by the b.l.o.c. collective was at the site of the Columbus Square in north Troy. This monument is a celebration of Christopher Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas and sign of Italian Pride in Troy NY. The monument is design to look like a boat, inside the boat there is a flattened sphere with a quote from Columbus on one side and an image in which a chain, used to demarcate Columbus’ voyage, connects Spain to the Americas. The use of the chain begs the question if the people who designed and erected the monument really do not know that the colonization of the Americas by the Europeans involved the very well documented massacre and enslavement of the First Peoples of this land (Columbus was a participant in this slave trade as he happily and dutifully reported in his journals) and the image of a chain is a widely recognized visual metaphor for slavery.

The question arises, why do we choose to tell these kinds of stories in public space? Why do we celebrate Columbus and European imperialism and not indigenous peoples’ resistance?


Detail of official Columbus landmark:


Official Columbus landmark in fore ground with b.l.o.c.(2) intervention in background:


b.l.o.c.(2) intervention was up for 3 weeks after that it was defaced. The insert was removed and replaced by a hand written note that read "In all the historical accounts it shows that Columbus really loved the natives"

Here is the defaced b.l.o.c.(2) landmark:



Washington Park:

The second landmark placed by b.l.o.c. around the same time as the Tubman landmark was one that critiqued Washington Park as a remnant of a long gone era. Washington Park was laid out in 1840 by the wealthy factory owners of Troy who lived in the houses that surround the park. It was designed to be a private space where the wealthy would have leisure time without running the risk of having to share space with the working class, which, as usual, comprised the majority of the population of the city. Washington Park is one of only two private ornamental parks in the United States, the other being Gramercy Park on which Washington Park is modeled. The park is protected by a deed whose proprietors are the Washington Park Association; hence it remains a private park to this day regardless of the fact that conditions in Troy have changed.

In The Social Logic of Space, Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson discuss the crisis of spatial logic in ways that illustrate the problems surrounding Washington Park:
"For the first time, we have the problem of a ‘designed’ environment that does not ‘work’ socially, or even one that generates social problems that in other circumstances might not exist: problems of isolation, physical danger, community decay and ghettoisation. The manifest existence of this pathology has called into question all the assumptions on which the new urban transformation was based: assumptions that separation was good for community, that hierarchisation of space was good for relations between groups, and that space could only be important to society by virtue of being identified with a particular, preferably small group, who would prefer to keep their domain free of strangers." (pg 28-29)

Hillier and Hanson go on to say, “We read space and anticipate lifestyle.” There is wealth and privilege fixed in the design of certain spaces, and it is because of their fixed nature that they become static and thus removed from the times they inhabit. Washington Park embodies the illusion of community with its highly orchestrated and controlled invitation only community events, what Lefebvre would call the “superficial ‘socialization’” of the “moneyed classes.” In many ways Washington Park has transcended place and become object for the gaze and the ownership and access of the privileged.

Landmark on fence of Washington Square Park: