ART & ACTION ON THE BRONX RIVER
The Fall 2024 semester of “Art and Action on the Bronx River” at Fordham culminated in an array of 12 individual student projects ranging from a mini-documentary, to a dance piece, to a 24-mile walk, as well as a number of other artworks. Taught by Professor Matthew López-Jensen, the course explores the intersection of art, ecology, and history, specifically focusing on the Bronx River and the communities surrounding it. For their final projects, students were tasked with creating ambitious works that responded to the river in creative and thought-provoking ways.
REFLECTIONS: GRACE ON THE WATER
Emerging artist Tori Garcillano has taken to the Bronx River to create a statement piece that implores viewers to consider the ways in which the art of dance can allow people to honor their bodies and surroundings. Her question is as follows: dance does not only exist in studios or on stages but in the very way that we interact with the world around us.
In this video piece, Garcillano dances her choreography on a dock atop the Bronx River at Starlight Park, directly across the way from the Bronx River House. In between moments of choreography, she has added brief clips of sights from the riverbank, focused mostly on the movement of the water. Just as water
creates reflections, Garcillano views her movement as a reflection on the ways in which dance is an expansive art form that exists beyond the body itself.
Link to piece: https://youtu.be/i2AWfbS59aM
CREATURE SPOTTED IN THE BRONX RIVER
When asked to describe her piece, collage artist Julia Mancini said it all began with a question- “Can take your picture?” From here, she collected body parts: a foot from a friend, her sister’s leg, and her own two hands. Her goal was to create a physical creature, a conglomeration of the people in her life, to bring to the river. “I wanted to exaggerate the inaccessibility of reaching the river and construct a reality where I could bring all of these people there, a reality where they could even swim in it.” She sought to create a symbolic creature with Photoshop to be blown up, printed, and then secured to an outstretched cardboard box and sealed with clear packing tape.
24 MILES,
19 FRAMES,
1 DAY
Patrick Dolan embarked on a 9-hour trek spanning the entire 24-mile length of the Bronx River. His journey took him from the busy metropolis to the small forests of our city, capturing the diverse ecosystems that exist within the city’s veins.
The journey began at Kensico Dam in Valhalla, NY, and ended Soundview Park, where the Bronx River meets the East River, with the goal of trying to stay as close to the river as possible during the journey. The Bronx River, once a vital waterway, now flows through a landscape transformed
by urbanization, offering a unique perspective on the intersection of nature and human development.
Link to project: https://www.behance.net/gallery/215144205/From-Start-to-Finish-River-Walk
“Sound Waves of the Bronx River” BY CHRISTIANA STAUB
Artworks by students Maxanne Millerhaller, Nikki Phillips, Emily Torres, Olivia Griffin, Sofia Cordero, Guadalupe Vargas, Kelly Stanton, and Jonas Guzman.
EMBODYING THE RECORD at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art
On October 12, 2023, UnionDocs collaborated with Fordham University and our Center for Community Engaged Learning and Visual Arts Program, to ask how we might embody found histories.
Fordham students and Lincoln Square community members display collages they created through a workshop with Crystal Z Campbell the day before.
Workshop participants included Helen Cahill, Luisa Coutinho Gazio, Dana Ebralidze, Nicole Estelami, Matthias Lai, Nicole Miceli, Manpreet Singh, Marie Stephen, Herbert McMillon and Michael Nelson.
Beforehand, students had read excerpts from After 1921: Notes from Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and Beyond, a collection of poems, essays, and images edited by artist Crystal Z Campbell and co-published by their Archive Acts (archiveacts.com) and VSW Press.
UnionDocs hosted Crystal Z Campbell and Catalina Alvarez to present work that approaches embodiment and performance of underknown or erased histories. Crystal Z Campbell shared and unpacked their concept of “underloved archives” while Catalina Alvarez shared sequences from Sound Spring, a film that shares resonant overlaps and methodologies.
God Bless the Child | Microscope Gallery
At this multimedia event in collaboration with Microscope Gallery and UnionDocs, Fordham students taking “Intro to Art and Engagement” showed work in a program together with internationally acclaimed experimental filmmaker Christopher Harris, on March 12, 2024.
The video installation and performance by Fordham students featured interviews, field recordings, and images of historical documents related to the destruction of the San Juan Hill neighborhood and Lincoln Square community in the 1950s.
The performance was followed by a presentation of God Bless the Child, Christopher Harris’s first autobiographical work.
In God Bless the Child, Harris draws directly from his experience as a foster child. Combining photos, records, and other materials from his personal archives with 16mm film footage he recently shot in Senegal, Harris situates “the carcerality of the social welfare state and child services in relation to Black childhood in the U.S.” within the broader context of the transatlantic slave trade and the French Catholic Church’s colonization of West Africa and the Americas. His hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, is presented alongside Saint-Louis, Senegal, as fraternal colonized twin cities.
The presentation was followed by an open conversation and Q&A with the audience.
The day before, Christopher Harris had lectured on abolitionist filmmaking for various classes taught by Alvarez, as well as Fadi Skeiker’s, THEA 4050 Arts, Social Justice, and Human Rights: Foundations:
These programs were supported by a Fordham University Faculty Challenge Grant and an Interdisciplinary Research Grant.
Materials for the Arts (MFTA)
On September 16, 2024, students in the “Intro to Art & Engagement” course visited Materials for the Arts (MFTA), New York’s largest creative reuse center, to collect their art supplies. Everything at MFTA is free, as it would otherwise be discarded and end up in a landfill!
Afterwards, Education Coordinator, Will Niedmann, led students in a zine-making workshop, using found materials.
This isn’t oral history (learning from the library)
On Wednesday October 23, 2024, in the Lipani Gallery and the adjacent seminar classroom at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, there was a quiet and short multimedia installation by students and their interviewees studying the “art of the interview”.
After brief talks from representatives of Landmark West! (Executive Director Sean Khorsandi) and Good Shepherd Faith Presbyterian Church (Michael Nelson, Ronald Woods and Neal Matticks) on topics ranging from urban renewal to urban removal, students presented research talks they had developed with the help of New York Public Library staff (thanks to Mia Brunner of the NYPL General Research Division for her tremendous support, as well as her colleagues in the Picture Collection of the Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs and the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History, and Genealogy).
The installation in the Lipani Gallery included this video by Fordham alumna Nikki Estelami, made with student field recordings and collages made by students and interviews from archival research at NYPL and Fordham University Special Collections.
This isn’t oral history featured presentations by Fordham students Junhan Zhao, Tanvi Shah, Ash Wang, Bhavika Yendapalli, Eric Bishop, Meena Kabbani and Morgan Mueller.
The classes of Professors Fadi Skeiker and Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock attended, along with several other individual guests.
This isn’t oral history was presented by Fordham’s Departments in Theatre and Visual Arts, Anthropology and American Studies.
Sound Stories
(Art of the Interview)
In VART 2222 Art of the Interview, students record interviews with elders who recount the history of the Lincoln Square neighborhood, which was demolished in the 1950’s to build Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and other developments.
On Saturday December 14th, the Fall 2024 class presented artworks highlighting various stories at Good Shepherd Faith Presbyterian Church, where many interviewees are members:
Ash Wang created this animated collage video highlighting a story from an interview with Ronald Woods.
Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church, by the way, is the last standing church to predate the Lincoln Center urban renewal project that demolished the rest of the neighborhood, and has a rich civil rights history.
Meena Kabbani and Bhavika Yendapalli created this piece from this interview with Michael Nelson, Harold Thomas, Debra Washington and Ronald Woods.
Eric Bishop features another Ronald Woods interview in this piece
Video by Morgan Mueller and Tanvi Shah, featuring a story told by Michael Nelson, Harold Thomas, Ronald Woods and Debra Washington
Here is Junhan Zhao’s video featuring stories told by Ronald Woods, Michael Nelson and Debra Washington.
Loops & Loops
(Intro to Art & Engagement: Protest, Participation, the Public & Other Performance Practices)
A very temporary installation
Monday December 16, 2024 | 2-3pm
Butler Gallery | Fordham College at Lincoln Center | 113 West 60th Street New York
Through a workshop with beck haberstroh and Mira Dayal, authors of Camera of Possibilities: A Workbook Towards a Carrier Bag Theory of Photography, students taking VART 1111 “Intro to Art & Engagement” were asked to think about the ways that text can serve as an invitation for engagement. They considered how invitations might serve as an incentive for someone to join in, and indicate who is invited to participate, how they participate, and what they can expect when they do. At Loops & Loops, our very temporary installation, students used simple prompts to invite the public into challenging and abstract conversations.
Film photos by Suchi Jalavancha:
Artworks by VART 1111 students Suchi Jalavancha, Isis Poulose, Shamia Rahman, Veni Rosales, Michelle Rosas Garcia, Pradanya Subramanyan, Elizabeth Weldon and Janson Zheng.
Presented by the Department of Theatre & Visual Arts. Special thanks to Nikki Estelami, Materials for the Arts, and Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning.
Zine by Suchi Jalavancha
Intro to Art & Engagement (a new class!)
This class is usually offered at Rose Hill every spring and every fall at Lincoln Center (but only since spring 2024, since it’s new!).
Art of the Interview (an Art & Engagement class)
VART 2222 has new attributes coming: History, American Studies, Theater Production and Design, Urban Studies (and it still has New Media Digital Design and Community Engaged Learning attributes).
