Your Weekly Gift from LMCC – Thanking our Essential Workers
Your Weekly Gift from LMCC
This week, as we approach May Day and International Workers' Day, we want to express our immense gratitude to our essential workers. As New Yorkers cheer each evening at 7pm in acknowledgement of the necessary and demanding work so many of our neighbors across the city are doing, we are energized by this great public art that celebrates our frontline workers.
- View the "Thank You Essential Workers Billboard" in person (if you're close by and can see it out of your window!) or digitally.
- Share your deep appreciation for workers worldwide through a participatory music project brought to you by LMCC grantee Tenth Intervention.
- Savor the many small businesses of Manhattan's Chinatown through a virtual tour by LMCC Grantee Think!Chinatown.
- Tend to your body and mind with weekly movement scores from iLAND.
Join Creative Engagement grantee Tenth Intervention for a massive, city-wide music performance of For Our Courageous Workers to be played on Wednesday, April 29, at the 7pm ‘cheer honoring our front-line workers.’
The organizers encourage city-wide professional musicians and "amateur pot-bangers" alike to take part in this symphonic fanfare from the safety of their windows, rooftops, and doorways.
"Thank You Essential Workers Billboard," a project by Process Space alum & River To River 2017 artist Joshua Frankel is currently displayed on a 48 foot wide digital billboard in Kearny, NJ, visible from Truck Route 1/9 between Newark and Jersey City.
The project was launched in collaboration with Kearny Point to show support for the workers on the frontlines.
The image on the left depicts Joshua's friend Frances in a riff on the iconic Rosie the Riveter. Frances is a Doctor of Physical Therapy at NYU Langone Medical Center, and is working tirelessly to help patients receive rehab for COVID while in quarantine herself.
Missing Chinatown? Come visit virtually!
In a collaboration between Creative Engagement Grantee Think!Chinatown and Urban Archives, this collection of historical photographs illustrates the diverse businesses, architecture, and communities that have occupied the streetscapes of this vibrant neighborhood over the last two centuries.
Think!Chinatown has also created a list of ways that you can support NYC's Chinatown and a bi-lingual resource list for Chinatown business & organizations.
River To River 2019 and Extended Life choreographer Jennifer Monson and iLAND offers a score every Friday to do solo or with another.
iLAND (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance) is a dance research organization that investigates the power of dance, in collaboration with other fields, to illuminate our kinetic understanding of the world.
In an interview with Eva Yaa Asantewaa as part of the Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation series, Monson reflects on how her practice has been impacted by the pandemic.
Monson says of working remotely, "I don’t just stare at the flat surface of the screen, I send my voice and my movement into their space. I let their movement and sound enter the entire space that I am in. It’s like watching the first person walk on the moon. There is an intense feeling of empathy, connection and humanity and at the same time that pixilated echo of distance."
Image credits
Header (L to R): Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Manhattan: Mott Street - Park Street" New York Public Library Digital Collections; Joshua Frankel, "Thank You Essential Workers Billboard," courtesy of the artist; Image courtesy of Tenth Intervention; Jennifer Monson, ditch, presented at 2019 River To River Festival. Photo by Ian Douglas.
Image courtesy of Tenth Intervention; Joshua Frankel, "Thank You Essential Workers Billboard," courtesy of the artist; Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Bowery Street # 10-12" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1887 - 1986; The Language of The Listening Body, 2006. Photo by Ian Douglas.