Thursday, April 16, 2015

Walk with me

Yesterday we went on a walk as part of Luke Willis Thompson's contribution to the New Museum's Triennial: Surround Audience.

For half an hour we followed our guide through the Lower East Side passing through Tompkins Square Park. It was a tent city for the homeless the first time we came to New York in the mid-eighties. Even today a haunt for the poor and dispossessed. We rounded the park twice and then headed toward the East River striding past a power station and into the grounds of the Jacob Riis public housing estates. Built in the late forties, the complex was named after Jacob Riis a campaigning journalist / photographer who revealed the terrible living conditions in this area in the late nineteenth century.

Climbing over a small fence our guide turned, reported the performance was over, thanked us and walked away.