For the month of July 2018, FREE SPACE will activate Miranda Kuo Gallery (136 Eldridge Street, New York) with vibrant and affirming programming to amplify marginalized voices. FREE SPACE is a programming initiative that exists at the intersection of activism and radical healing. We are interested in what possibilities can emerge from granting the disempowered and disenfranchised a "Free Space" - to think, gather, and create.
Free Space is intended as a hypothetical creative and experimental space for marginalized people to occupy who are very rarely afforded this luxury. However, the false notion of “free space” has often resulted in exploitative practices that unfairly displace lower income communities of color. Chinatown and the Lower East Side are vulnerable to this dangerous and unjust tradition.
The Miranda Kuo Gallery itself is located across the street from 135 Eldridge, where leaders from the Chinatown Tenants Union have been organizing to protect the building’s tenants from predatory developers and abusive landlords.
We recommend donating to CAAAV: https://caaav.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=2
For more information on ongoing anti-gentrification coalition movements, please visit the following:
http://www.chinatownworkinggroup.org/
http://www.chinatownartbrigade.org/
https://www.aad.nyc/en/
Help the tenants of 85 Bowery fight displacement by donating here. The facilitators of FREE SPACE are: Dana Davenport, Tiffany Jaeyeon Shin, and Danielle Wu. For more information, please email [email protected].