Image collecting

Every time I visited a POPS, there was nobody there.

The data I was collecting was showing how empty these places were, which fit into my idea of the soul of the sites, but I knew that the chairs were moving every time I revisited.

One morning I meet my friend in Times Square, we walk to Worldwide Plaza. It is empty, just like the last two times I have been there. I take photos of the chairs, see if they have moved.

Most POPS have minimum requirements for amenities - "172 movable chairs." Some POPS have bolted their chairs to the floor.

Some POPS have chairs which used to be bolted to the floor.

Once I arrived at Worldwide Plaza on 8th Avenue for the third time, everything was different.

I tried combining the images I had in an autographic visualization to show how this disparity between the public/private information could be displayed as the disparity between when a space is in use or not.

The result was not amazing.

I kept visiting the sites. I am obsessed with them, their transience, their emptiness when I find them.

I can't quite grasp what it is that haunts me; the rules, the breaking of the rules, the abstract idea of "public", the land that is given to developers in exchange for commodifying public space, the surveillance? I continue attending my classes in Columbia, confronted by the tap of my ID every time I enter 116th Street, a public street which has turned private this year.

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