Deskxistence

Scholarglyphs NYC

  • PS 131, Queens
  • PS 103, Queens
  • PS 284, Brooklyn (Brownsville)
  • Benjamin Banneker Academy, Brooklyn
  • PS 327, Brooklyn
  • Bronx Lab, the Bronx
  • PS 138, the Bronx
  • PS 366, the Bronx
  • Lower Manhattan Arts Academy
  • New York
  • map: map
map

New York – a place of immigration. People come here in order to settle. Pupils achieve this feeling by leaving marks on the school desks, in this way becoming familiar with the location, appropriating it. My goal was to involve at least nine schools from city quarters with different social backgrounds in the project.

Invited by a NGO (freeDimensional) for a period of two months, I started off in this city on the wrong foot. Without realizing it, I was caught between two lines of conflict, to some extent due to the economic crisis but also owing to interpersonal tensions between the project partners. Following eight weeks of intense communication and with the support of friends and colleagues it was still possible to implement the project. I printed the last desks the night before my departure. Nine schools in four different city quarters participated: private schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn, public schools in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. One school is located for example in Brownsville, supposedly the only quarter in NYC with a rising homicide rate. In Queens, the only school to be honoured by a visit of the former president Bill Clinton because of its ethnic diversity participated. I completed a total of 120 prints in New York.

A note about the photos: The US law does not permit school pupils to be photographed.

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