Diversity Plaza: Documenting as Resistance

Naomi Sturm-Wijesinghe and Mauricio Bayona

Los Herederos

The characteristics that define America’s most diverse neighborhood—booming cultural scenes, a polyphony of languages, and urban activist movements—are attracting the existential threat of gentrifiers and developers.

Over the next year, Diversity Plaza: Documentation as Resistance will explore documentation of community gathering space—Jackson Heights’ Diversity Plaza—as an act of resistance against displacement. Working at the nexus of socially-engaged public art, public interest folklife, and cultural sustainability work, this initiative proposes a series of community documentation and storytelling workshops that will produce a digital community archive. Diversity Plaza: Documentation as Resistance centers local voices as a means of place-keeping, with the intent of reinvigorating interest in maintaining the space by and for the local community as in years past.

This project will deploy the Sonicycle, a media-equipped green energy bicycle invented by Los Herederos and made from recycled materials. Often referred to as a DJ instrument, documentary tool and community activation platform rolled into one, the colorful and interactive bike naturally attracts a crowd, inspires individuals to share stories, and empowers local residents to document and archive their surroundings. Support from Assembling Voices will go toward fieldwork, public programming, and digital archive creation.

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