PROJECTS

Plaza

Cheryl Rivera

"Plaza" is an audio story and guerrilla art series about how Brooklynites struggle to recapture public space. City plazas have long been spaces for people watching, communing, music, and independent vendors. But late stage capitalism has turned the plaza into a space of big box commerce, accompanied by heavy policing and hostile architecture to discourage gathering outside of proscribed hours and uses. "Plaza" will combine on-the-street audio interviews, interviews with organizers from community groups like Plaza Proletaria and others, audio from guerilla art actions (produced by me and my closest comrades), and narrative history of two Plazas that have served as sites of political struggle recently: the Barclays Center and Plaza Tonatiuh in Sunset Park. This project will produce a 3-4 episode audio series, an archive of interview with political organizers, and a series of guerilla art installations at Barclays.