Xeni Jardin interviews Mark Read who did the bat-man projects on the Verizon building.
XJ: How did you go about finding someone nearby who would allow you stage this from inside their home?
MR: Opposite the Verizon building, there is a bunch of city housing. Subsidized, rent-controlled. There’s a lack of services, lights are out in the hallways, the housing feels like jails, like prisons. I walked around, and put up signs in there offering money to rent out an apartment for a few hours. I didn’t say much more. I received surprisingly few calls, and most of them seemed not quite fully “there.” But then I got a call from a person who sounded pretty sane. Her name was Denise Vega. She lived on the 16th floor. Single, working mom, mother of three.
I spoke with her on the phone, and a few days later went over and met her.
I told her what I wanted to do, and she was enthused. The more I described, the more excited she got.
Her parting words were, “let’s do this.”
She wouldn’t take my money. That was the day of the eviction of Zuccotti, the same day. And she’d been listening to the news all day, she saw everything that had happened.
“I can’t charge you money, this is for the people,” she said.
She was born in the projects. She opened up her home to us.
She was in there tonight with her 3 daughters, 2 sisters. The NYPD started snooping around down on the ground while the projections were up, it was clear where we were projecting from, and inside it was festive.
“If they want to come up they’re gonna need a warrant!,” her family was saying. “If they ask us, well, we don’t know what they are talking about!” They were really brave and cool.
Fred Klonsky 