Little Syria Archive

Little Syria Parade, Little Syria Parade, archival inkjet prints on hardboard, performance and historical tour, commissioned for The Armory Show, curated by Ava Ansari, 20

This project began with research into the disapeared Lower Manhattan neighborhood of ‘Little Syria’, the al Mahjar literary movement that blossomed there, and over the years involved historic preservation efforts, documentation and maintenance of an historical archive, a participatory parade in conjunction with the 2015 Armory Show, and a two-year residency at the Queens Museum (2014-2016) during which ephemera from the archive were situated into an evolving sculptural installation in conversation with the utopiam architectural visions and urban renewal operations of Robert Moses.

Pull My Daisy

In 2006, I found myself squatting in Allen Ginsberg’s derelict East Village Apartment. The next two years of cohabitation occasioned a series of animations, collaborations with other artists, and ultimately a re-creation of the 1959 Robert Frank / Alfred Leslie film, “Pull My Daisy”. This recreation incorporates the tension between individual authorship, collaboration, and improvisation that defined the original production, and our original footage has evolved into an ongoing series of improvisational quasi-narrative performance/screenings between myself and musician Baby Copperhead.