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: