Another New York City cop is under arrest for accosting a woman at gunpoint on Friday morning and raping her in a backyard near her apartment. The 25 year old teacher was on her way to work. The plainclothes cop stopped her to “ask directions,” then showed his gun, put his arm around her and said, “You’re coming with me.” Jesus Christ, when are we going to disarm this band of bloodthirsty thugs roaming our city streets and preying on us? Read the whole story here.
Jana Leo, My Neighbor, 2002 – 2011
Artist’s statement:
She used to live across the hallway and was the first person I related to when I moved to Chinatown in 2002. She came into my apartment when assembling furniture She pushed the door, smile and look around talking in Chinese and sit in a chair while I was cleaning; for years she knock at my door and gave me “food stamps canned food”: salmon, green beans, carrots and evaporated milk. I used to storage the goods in a closet, took pictures of the labels, and open a can once in while, when I was too busy to get any other food. She lived by herself and spend most her day in and out from the apartment to the park in front of the building. Years passed like that; she smiled when sees me happy and recognized it was because of the person I have around, who took this picture.In 2008, I expend the whole winter in Spain and when I come back I realized she wasn’t going to the park anymore and that she have caretakers all day long. I asked what happened, (she spoke to me in Chinese and I in Spanish) I realized by the amount of pills and diapers that something serious have happened. She walked along the hallways during the day but never go anymore to the park. I start walking holding her in the hallway. I looked at her feet wearing just sleepers. She looked so frail to me. I imagine carrying her in my back but then asked myself what if she falls. I called social services to find out about the care takers and if they can take her down through complains so I wouldn’t have to do it. A few times, I tried to make her going down the stairs; but she would stop right before the first step. We spent the summer walking in the hallway.I have a ticket to go back to Spain with no return for a long while. I signed myself a date for crossing the limit; the limit between the hallway and the staircase; the limit between her apartment and the door; the limits between the building door and the park with a street in the middle. I practiced the walk mentally. A Saturday in late August 2009, I knocked at her door and take it to the hallway walk, one step down, she hesitated, I hold her tight, letting her know we were going to make it. She stopped. I indicated that we were going to make it, I don’t know how but was clear to her. I hold her very tied, and her weigh went to the first step and then the other and the other, her fragile body, the feet on sleepers… I put one of her hand on the stair rail and hold her body, one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven…. And one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven and one and two and three and four and five and six, and seven eight we were by the door. She stopped again as if she didn’t want to open the door to life anymore. I opened the door and blocked the way back with my body. She stepped out. She laughed at the sun. Her face illuminated and she talked to me. We crossed the street and find a bench in the park and sit. She was in her park. She was alive. I tried to create a pattern for her so she has to ask the caretaker to do when I am not there.The amount of times I pictured in my mind the trip from her apartment into the park sound silly to say because were so many and we only did it once. We were not just going downstairs, I was crossing my own limits with her and she was defeating death.I didn’t know her name. We never have any reason to like each other but we did.
This picture in the fire stair in between mine and her apartment to honor her and to recognize that I missed her. Also this picture in the fire stair, that has became my gallery is a piece of art. It recognizes that affinities to people are made beyond age, positions, education, language, or origin.
This picture was taken by Simon Lund a Saturday afternoon, sometime in August 2009.Jana Leo
August 5 2011
New York
In January I went to White Columns to see, “Looking Back,” an exhibit surveying artwork shown in New York in 2010, curated by Bob Nickas. The work was a mix of mostly New York-based artists, young and old, living and dead. One piece that caught my attention was by Candy Jernigan: Candy Jernigan, Found Dope: Part II, 1986 (detail) Found objects on paper 28 in. x 39 in. Broken bits of used crack vials are pasted into into grid formation on a large poster, sealed behind glass, like the butterflies of a 19th century natural historian. Beneath each artifact in the grid is small even block handwriting, marking the date, time and location of its collection, e.g. June 11/Second Avenue at Third street/west side/10…
Tagged: 1980s, archival practice, Art, Bob Nickas, Candy Jernigan, crack, East Village, method, New York, trash, walking
Tagged: Gil Scott Heron, good writing, Last Poets, New York, social science, the truth
Take a good look at the man in the center and the man on the right. They are Kenneth Moreno (43) and Franklin Mata (29) two New York City Police Officers who raped an intoxicated woman in her home, after they were called by a taxi driver to ensure her safe arrival. On a night in December, 2008, Mata stood guard, while Moreno raped his victim. They were acquitted yesterday after trial by jury in a New York City courtroom. This is just another example of botched justice in a history of violent police abuses of the citizenry of this city. According to CCTV recordings these enforcers of the law entered her home four different times in the same night. According to 911 tapes, they…
Tagged: archival practice, Kojak, London, Los Angeles, memory, method, New York, Philip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes
Yesterday’s performance of Foolish Journeys went very well. First, participants came in and signed the book, and then they were given pamphlets (made from a single letter-sized sheet folded in half twice), which contained the Foolish Journeys orientation text. Then they were given a reading, using my deck of cards, laid out on a tablecloth made of cut up pieces of the official MTA New York City subway maps. The tablecloth was pieced together to create an impossible geography of New York,with some segments of the city repeated, mirrored and distorted, as in a dream. After the reading, participants were asked to choose the card they would most like to focus upon and encounter in their lives. Once this card was chosen, I scattered…
Tagged: archival practice, Art, dreams, foolish journeys, maps, New York, occult, situation, subway, underground
Here are some images of Terrible Karma, the project I did in collaboration with geographer and curator Merle Patchett, on March 25, 2011, as part of the citywide commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, the deadliest industrial disaster in New York history. All photos were taken by Merle Patchett. For more images of the event, visit her site.
Tagged: archival practice, Art, collaboration, encounter, labor, memory, New York, stranger, street art, streets, Terrible Karma
Hey New York, I’m participating in this panel discussion next weekend, which promises to be interesting. Come out and participate, if you’re in town! Re-Inscribing the City: Unitary Urbanism and it’s Legacy Panel Discussion April 9th , 4:15-5:45pm WHERE: Judson Memorial Church (balcony) 55 Washington Square South, NYC A panel for the 5th Annual Anarchist Book Fair. From the late 1950s until about the early 1970s, a group of poets, artists, architects, students and troublemakers known as the Lettrrist/Situationist International (LI/SI) made a desperate attempt to re-inscribe the European city so that its inhabitants could break free from the bleak urban routine of work and consumption. Today some artists are still attempting to break from urban alienation, while operating on the periphery of the establishment,…
“See, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing”
Tagged: archival practice, Bill Cunningham, fashion, method, methodos, New York, photography, style
