Documenting as Resistance - Incite at Columbia University

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.

Diversity Plaza: Documentation as Resistance explores 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 proposed a series of community documentation and storytelling workshops that will produce a digital community archive.

This project centered 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 deployed 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 went toward fieldwork, public programming, and digital archive creation.

About the Team

Founded in 2015, Los Herederos (the inheritors) is an award-winning grassroots media-arts non-profit organization dedicated to inheriting culture in the digital age. Co-founder Naomi Sturm-Wijesinghe is a multimedia producer, ethnographer and writer from Queens. Co-founder Mauricio Bayona is a photographer, filmmaker, and documentarian who has called Queens his home since 1999 after immigrating from his native Colombia.