The Right to the City: Public Space on Film

The Right to the City: Public Space on Film

January 29, 2024 – March 1, 2024

Charles Lane, Sidewalk Stories (film still), 1989. Courtesy Kino Lorber.

PRESS: New York Review of Architecture | The Ticker

Mishkin Gallery is pleased to present The Right to the City: Public Space on Film. From January 29-March 1, Mishkin Gallery will transform into a cinema with a vibrant selection of films exploring the spatial politics of belonging in urban environments. The notion of public space is a vision of the collective: in urban life, density necessitates a sharing of resources. Shared spaces—the commons—demonstrate how we can, and must, live together.

The Right to the City: Public Space on Film presents a series of cinematic works that both take place in, and take as a subject, the public sphere. The spaces in these films act as sites of leisure, labor, protest, surveillance—topographies of everyday life. We see how architecture, real estate, and public policy can determine the structure of the built and natural environments—but just as often, how people can improvise and deviate, and creatively misuse these shared spaces. Staged at the Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, CUNY—a public university—this program will pose the question: what does it mean to truly be public?

Though grounded in the local context of New York City, the films in this series span geographic locations from London to Mexico City, Tokyo to Lodz, in order to understand how issues like gentrification, policing, inequality, and globalization have remade public landscapes in cities across the globe. Each week will engage with a different subtopic, such as collective action (week one), housing and inequality (week two), the personal and the spatial (week three), the real estate state (week four), and the window as a frame onto the city (week five). Films will be screened throughout the day, paired with a robust public program series including artist talks, faculty lectures, and student workshops. All events are free and open to the public.

A booklet published for the exhibition is available here.

The Right to the City: Public Space on Film has been curated by Alexandra Tell. The exhibition is made possible by Friends of the Mishkin Gallery and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY).

***Films will loop continuously in gallery throughout the day. Special Event screenings are live, in person and free.***

Schedule of Programs:

Program 1: Collective Action (January 29-February 2)
Films:
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Parallax (2018), 3 min
Margaret Rorison, One Document for Hope (2016), 8 min
Morgan Quaintance, Letter from Tokyo (2018), 40 min

Program 2: Housing and Inequality (February 5-February 9)
Films:
Ayo Akingbade, Tower XYZ (2016), 3 min
Charles Lane, Sidewalk Stories (1989), 101 min

Special Event:
Thursday, February 8, 6-8 pm: Screening introduced by Professor Hilary Botein, Baruch College, CUNY

Program 3: Memory and Mythology (February 13-February 16)
Films:
Onyeka Igwe, The Miracle on George Green (2022), 12 min
WangShui, From Its Mouth Came a River of High-End Residential Appliances (2018), 13 min
Claire Read & Nora DeLigter, The Pedestrian (2023), 19 min

Special Event:
Wednesday, February 14, 6-8pm: Valentine’s Day screening with introduction by Pushti Vachhani. Co-sponsored by Baruch’s Graduate Arts Administration Network

Program 4: The Real Estate State (February 20-February 23)
Films:
Noah Barker & Dora Budor, Chase Manhattan (2021-2022), 10 min
Tony Cokes, B4 & After the Studio, Pt 1 (2019), 11 min
John Wilson, The Road to Magnasanti (2017), 15 min

Special Events:
Tuesday, February 20, 5-8pm (OFFSITE): The Five Demands, Screening & Black/Latinx Student Club Fair
Wednesday, February 21, 6-7:30pm: Screening introduced by Noah Barker

Program 5: The Window as a Frame onto the City (February 26-March 1)
Films:
Charlie Ahearn, Doin’ Time in Times Square (1992), 39 minutes
Józef Robakowski, Z mojego okna (From My Window) (1978-1999), (2000), 19 min
Danielle Arbid, Outside (2020), 5 min

Special Events:
Thursday, February 29, 6-8 pm: Screening followed by filmmaker Charlie Ahearn and artist Jane Dickson in conversation with Professor Amy Herzog, Queens College/Graduate Center, CUNY

Friday, March 1, 5-7pm: Commons Zine Launch Party with Baruch’s Encounters Magazine