Mishkin Gallery: The Right to the City: Public Space on Film

Mishkin Gallery at Baruch College, CUNY
135 E. 22nd Street
New York, NY 10010
https://weissman.baruch.cuny.edu/mishkin-gallery/

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.

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.***