We hosted our first public event at Queens Flushing Meadows Corona Park today as part of the project “Through Body, Through Earth, Through Speech,” focusing on the theme of use/misuse of public space. As Phuong mentioned in her post, the park is full of beautiful cases of people and animals using the park as they need, often not as it was intended. These actions are what create the meaning of the space, not the other way around.
This photo (below) is from a rubbing activity that we did as part of the event where we created rubbings of a large floor mural that tells the story of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. We didn’t anticipate it, but as soon as we started, so many park-goers were interested in doing it as well. Luckily, Or had brought extra paper and we were all able to work on rubbings. A take-away from our feedback session after the event was that it would be nice to extend this engagement into a conversation, interview, or even have these spontaneous participants join for the rest of the event.
