In New York City, we play in public spaces and our play proposes a broad range of social meanings.
Category Archives: Urban Play
Artists-in-Residence: SPS Workers Share Their Photography, Inspiration
By Zenzile Greene-Daniel
In December of last year, I was honored to be invited to participate in a special Brown Bag lunch at SPS in which I and three of my colleagues gave individual presentations on our use of the medium of photography. I was very excited to take part — and especially to learn more about the creative projects of my fellow workers.
Continue reading Artists-in-Residence: SPS Workers Share Their Photography, Inspiration
Work, Play, Fight
By Zenzile Greene
Our idea for this piece was to use images as a way to explore the extracurricular life of a worker and place it directly into the context of her work space. It is a visual dialogue between her journey as a martial artist and the role it has played in her evolution as a mother, and worker as well as other identities.
<click through to see the slideshow>
The process of photographing Ellie in her traditional Gi uniform using our midtown city work space as a backdrop was a pleasantly disorienting experience. For me, photographing Ellie in this setting changed the meaning of the space as well as Ellie’s place within it. The passages in each slide are sections of an essay that Ellie wrote about her martial arts training. We wanted to convey Ellie’s body in trained movement, juxtaposing her thoughts against a series of battle positions. Continue reading Work, Play, Fight
Tourney d’Hipsterville
In New York City, we play in public spaces and our play proposes a broad range of social meanings. In our first piece of the series we call “Urban Play”, Wayne Chin, an academic skills staff member at JSMI, recounts an experience at a thrilling table tennis tournament in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that is as dizzying, fast-paced and unpredictable as the NYC table tennis circuit itself.
December 8th, I needed a sub for the New Jersey Table Tennis Club’s Thursday league on short notice.
One of my FIT students emails me about a membership at a rec center in NYC but in that email she mentions that there’s this tourney at a place called Pips (pipsout.com) in Hipsterville Williamsburg with a first place cash prize of $300, and a second place prize of a $100 gift certificate at a local Apple/electronics store in Williamsburg. She thinks I can win this thing but I know nothing is ever that easy in TT. And there is almost certainly going to be another ringer showing up with a rating. Continue reading Tourney d’Hipsterville
