CITY OF MOVEMENT

Now playing on infinite loop on the front wall of the Museum of the City of New York's Activist New York exhibition, "City of Movement" is a ten minute archival collage of 100+ years of New York City social movements, unfolding in five acts: Organizing, Protest, Media, Spectacle and Direct Action.  The film explores the relationships that emerge among different historical moments through juxtapositions in the social practice, visuality, and sonic environment of New York City activism, and highlights the way the city's role as a media, finance and arts capital has shaped its public expressions of protest.  Focusing not on movement leaders but on the "nameless" faces of ordinary people who helped shape history, the piece shows how much we owe to past struggles, but also how many struggles remain unfinished.