Culture is Like Water—It Always Finds the Low Ground First
CULTURE IS LIKE WATER—IT ALWAYS FINDS THE LOW GROUND FIRST
Community Hubs, Belonging and Anti-Displacement Strategies
By Masoom Moitra
An essay commissioned by NOCD-NY for Reimagining New York City, in response to a peer exchange session hosted in the fall of 2022
Cry You One, an interdisciplinary project of the New Orleans-based companies ArtSpot Productions and Mondo Bizarro, which includes Nick Slie. photo:Melisa Cardona
Nick Slie, a performer, producer and cultural organizer from New Orleans says he is struck by how “culture is like water—it always finds the low ground first”. He adds, “If we want to meet culture in its true beauty and splendor, we have to find a way for institutions to be wide, flexible and open enough. There is a tension between what I’m asked to do for an institution to keep the space alive and going, and listening to culture and people, listening to where the water is going—we have to be brave enough to pivot and cede institutional power, maybe even cede land, when culture decides that maybe your place in it, is perhaps what is not needed. It’s a big dance.”
Trust a deep, meaningful and rather urgent lesson in ‘Reimagining New York City’ to come from outside New York City—as it should be if we are to break out of our echo chamber- thought bubble- pandemic riddled- worlds where virtuality and materiality collide. Thankfully, I am in a room full of minds and hearts ebbing with creative, patient, wise, caring and rigorous approaches to asking a pertinent question that as many admitted to not having the answers to as those that did—all while sharing journeys full of radical victories and complex tensions:
How do folks/groups/organizations/institutions/spaces based in rapidly changing neighborhoods build meaningful relationships with neighbors while fighting displacement? What role do artists play in this process?
The greatest contradiction in this discourse lies in the politically and economically significant role of cultural organizations and artists in the turbulent tides of gentrification. While some of them are native to their neighborhood, others move after being priced out of elsewhere—occasionally grappling with poverty, multiple jobs, unaffordable childcare, racial discrimination and other forms of marginalization themselves. Real estate developers exploit creative communities to leverage property value without benefitting existing residents in meaningful and sustainable ways, and this leads to the inevitable—artists end up becoming complicit agents of displacement, in conflict with the interests of long time residents, and eventually turn into a symbol of dispossession in the very neighborhood they hoped to adopt and nurture.
But, not all! As we will find in this piece, for decades there have been cultural visionaries, leaders and organizers who have emerged from the grassroots of the neighborhoods they work in, and those that have tried to forge paths in solidarity with the people and communities they call home. By intertwining artistic and cultural practices with political education, advocacy and community organizing, they have cultivated a sense of rootedness and belonging. They have played pivotal roles in ensuring that neighbors and the places they have long been tied to can stay where they are, thrive where they are—responding radically to the notion of arts and culture as being elite preoccupations, far removed from working class struggles.
In Gowanus, a rapidly gentrifying formerly industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn (and site of a canal deemed as one of the most polluted water bodies in the country), art has long been regarded as a vanguard for speculation and redevelopment. Well meaning artists and arts organizations trying to bring culture to a “barren neighborhood like Gowanus” are now being faced with public housing residents and native Lenape communities claiming space and reminding the creative ecosystem that a rich tradition of arts & culture had already existed in this area prior to their arrival. Through a project called Making Gowanus (2018), artist Imani Gayle Gillison and I convened several Gowanus organizations who opened their spaces and resources to intergenerational artists from Gowanus, Wyckoff and Warren Houses. Within a short span of three months and a modest budget, this collaboration between public housing and non-public housing artistic communities and planned redistribution of resources resulted in an unprecedented outcome—launching of Theater of the Liberated, a community led theater company, and a movement to spearhead the successful reopening of the Gowanus Community Center. The center has been shut for more than 15 years as a part of federal budget cuts, in spite of being a cultural hub and lifeline for its residents.
The cast of Soft, a play produced by Theater of the Liberated as part of Making Gowanus. photo: Hester Street
Los Sures/Southside Williamsburg and Bushwick are faced with similar violent political tensions that have led to a dramatic erasure of people and cultural heritage. For four decades legendary community human rights and arts organization El Puente has fearlessly brought residents, activists and artists together to transform their systemically disinvested neighborhoods into liberated, safe and creative beacons of youth-led cultural organizing and preservation. To counter relentless waves of gentrification and defend their people, they have pioneered the use of art as a powerful tool in response to injustice, most recently through the Nuestro Air/ Our Air campaign, which I was involved with. Interestingly, instead of putting up walls between themselves and “new Bushwick/ Williamsburg”, they have expanded their strategies by teaming up with younger arts organizations like Bushwick Starr to redirect cultural resources where they are needed the most, build capacity among local residents/ young artists, and by conducting research and programs to counter the worst effects of gentrification and environmental injustice.
While these debates have been more than two decades in the making (if not carrying a much longer historical burden of racially discriminatory practices in urban planning, design and art), Covid-19 has shaken up and exposed the unhealed rawness of these systemic wounds, while simultaneously reaffirming the significant survival role played by many of these organizations and artists.
Clothing drive for asylum seekers in partnership with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid at Arbuilt’s Day of the Dead event at Brooklyn Army Terminal. photo: c/o ArtBuilt
ArtBuilt, based out of the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Brooklyn, opened their space to mutual aid and food distribution during the pandemic, feeding more than 500 families a week and convincing their organization that community based efforts that aid survival during crisis are integral to their mission of providing support to artists and an expanded vision of shared/affordable space. The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center, located in the heart of the Lower East Side in Manhattan, embraced its role as a space for rest and meetings for delivery workers’ unions, upcycling fairs, food and goods giveaways, as well as a diversity of artist supported benefit events for asylum seekers. Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PRTT) nimbly repurposed their space in the Bronx into a film studio in response to the needs of their artists and neighbors. Chocolate Factory Theater, based out of Long Island City in Queens, sent out no strings attached emergency funds to all of the artists, tech and part-time staff immediately at the shut-down.
In the Bronx, Pregones/PRTT produced over 20 episodes of Spotlight: Creatives at Work, each 30-minute episode featured artists of color and aired online as well as on BronxNet Community Television. photo: c/o Pregones/PRTT
All of this is but a small glimpse into the fluid spectrum of roles played by committed arts organizations and artists, not just in situations of emergency, but as a continuous practice. Webs of survival that came through during the pandemic were not built overnight.
Every group agreed that they operated just as they did during times of non-crisis, and the deep relationships helped them serve their community in ways that could not have been replicated exclusively during an emergency. Esther Robinson (ArtBuilt) says, “In the face of large systemic failures, the only things we have with this much flexibility and turbulence, are values and beloved partners—the solidity of working in community for many years with people you love”.
Mark Valdez (Mixed Blood) reminds us that speaking about “the community” as we tend to do overlooks the complexity of community. He says, “We are serving parts of the community—not “the community”, since there is no “the community”. We serve the people who invite us in and want to participate. There are so many parts of the community that we don’t serve, don’t pull from, don't touch, don't hear from, can’t find out what they want or need. Holding that complexity is important—who we don't listen to needs to be acknowledged to be honest and insightful.”
Zafi Dimitropoulou del Angel (People's Theatre Project), too, speaks about the need to actively and honestly listen, a thought echoed by many others as their primary strategy to counter place-based oppression. Radical listening was woven into the foundation of the People’s Theater Project, which emerged from the courageous act of going out into the streets and speaking directly to more than 200 people, to hear what they wanted and using this information to shape their offerings.
Many of these longtime cultural organizations, after much struggle and advocacy, now have access to space and land, but the community demographics have reshaped and shifted around them to an extent that has made their surroundings and people inherently unrecognizable. Prerana Reddy (Recess) observes that these immigrant communities in succession don't have the same interests, politics, cultural politics and traditions as their predecessors. Many organizations are repositioning themselves as they are being challenged to grow under these circumstances, serve communities without being bound by place, respond to their newer neighbors, and dance like water to expand organizational missions and programs.
What now? How do art and culture connect to land in a place where the two have been violently and systematically disconnected, decimated? While Nick Slie (Mondo Bizarro) mentions ceding stolen land, we also hear organizers like Monxo López (South Bronx Unite) reinforce the significance of community land ownership and preservation strategies like Community Land Trusts (CLTs). I have found this to be true in Los Sures as well, where while the struggle for cultural preservation through arts programming is rich, layered and receives some support, the struggle for reclaiming community power through collective land ownership is seldom on the table. Without land, what will people stand on to defend culture? El Puente’s Green Light District proposed community self determination as being central to neighborhood development and planning—this is to be achieved by bridging the connection of struggles and solutions between housing, public health, environmental and open spaces, arts and culture and educational equity. Libertad Guerra (The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center) reminds us to think expansively as we consider the multidimensional nature of spaces and hubs through the framework of ecosystemic thinking. Libertad says that mutual aid, healing, and becoming civic spaces emphasizes the importance of publicly owned sanctuary spaces for futurizing and connecting people from isolation. She paints a vivid picture for us to dwell our reimaginations of New York City upon: “a celebration of radical difference, chaotic, unabashedly internationalist, hosting people into generosity, with a capacious vision of collaboration, always responsive to social needs, home to multi ethnic, multigenerational, multi disciplinary communities.”
A vision for New York City emerges here that is made strong and interconnected through intricate networks of relationships, friendships, neighborly bonds and solidarity. Not only do these networks pull people together through a layered vision of what art and culture can be and do, but they also provide both roots and wings to forge on with the travails of everyday life. Constantly ebbing and flowing with life, they come further alive during crisis as the one source of support and inspiration that can be depended on—is this not what it is to truly be free, to be in community, to belong?
Sheila Lewandowski (Chocolate Factory Theater) and Arnaldo J López (Pregones/PRTT), in their roles as seasoned cultural organizers and leaders, speak out about the issues behind the language of ‘placemaking’, which has ironically been turned into a disingenuous placebreaking strategy for real estate and capital to accelerate displacement, from the Bronx and Brooklyn, to Queens and Staten Island—and call on the field to propose alternatives. I’m thinking something along the lines of ‘creative collective caregiving’—hard to co opt for profit, and embracing the radical commitments that artists and cultural leaders have adopted in the lands we occupy.
For those of us ripped away from families, histories, land and identity, this means everything and gives us reason to stay in the face of every crisis. The forces of dispossession and displacement might be strong, but as long as this loving work happens in the paths set forth by the organizers and artists in a room like this one, we can be hopeful - for what are we but beings of water, rooted to a body of water, trying to find the lowest ground?
Masoom Moitra is a community urban planner, designer, researcher, artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NYC. Please contact her on moitra.masoom@gmail.com with any questions, ideas or concerns.
This gathering was part of Reimagining New York City, a citywide series of visioning sessions and exchanges to incorporate the wisdom, imagination, and creative practices of community cultural organizations, artists, and neighborhood residents in decision making and transformative change.