Activist Estates of the Lower East Side


- BY NANDINI BAGCHEE -

Activist Estates of the Lower East Side is an online platform that explores the buildings and properties that are celebrated sites of resistance in New York City. This project is an expansion of the themes from the exhibit Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida (2019) authored and designed by the urban historian and architect Nandini Bagchee in partnership with curator Libertad Guerra.

The exhibit focused on the intersectional histories of activism centered on three community-owned buildings that each presented a different facet of space-based resistance in the Lower East Side. The online version of this same exhibit is an invitation to expand upon that history by mapping other cultural institutions in the lower east side via timelines and ethnographic documentation. The method of combining maps, reports, photographs, and other archival material was originally introduced in Nandini Bagchee’s book Counter Institution: Activist Estates of the Lower East Side.

This project was made possible in part by a Humanities New York Action Grant, the Teiger Foundation, and by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council and Council member Christopher Marte.

EXPLORE THE LOWER EAST SIDE

This project is an expansion of the themes from the exhibit Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida (2019) authored and designed by the urban historian and architect Nandini Bagchee in partnership with curator Libertad Guerra.

AELES is an evolving resource that can grow to include supplemental layers of the case studies selected and the ongoing survival and futuring intents of these legacies.