SIDEWALK STUDIES (2023–2025)

I was a founding facilitator of Sidewalk Studies, a program of the Strother School of Radical Attention. I designed and led free workshops exploring the attention economy through literature and critical theory.

Each study followed the same format: a group convened at a public location and read a short text (first silently, then aloud together). After a brief discussion, participants split into pairs or threes and made their way to a second location, performing that evening’s study en route—each with a double-sided practice card and a map. Phones were discouraged, and many practices were conducted in silence. The group reconvened at the second location to debrief.

Most studies took place in New York City. In 2024 I created a modified Sidewalk Study for Joanna Fiduccia’s undergraduate art history class at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven. I facilitated fifteen studies between November 2023 and June 2025.

STUDY

CO-FACILITATOR

LOCATION

DATE

“Cybernetics for the Twenty-First Century: An Interview with Philosopher Yuk Hui” by Geert Lovink

Abigail Abraham

Williamsburg

2025_06_30

Disillusioned by Design: excerpts from What Design Can’t Do by Silvio Lorusso

Flip Zang

The High Line

2025_03_17

“Reflections on the Sonic Commons” by O+A (Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger)

Flip Zang

Lincoln Center

2024_11_19

Unrecognized Sphinxes: “The Passage de L’Opera” by Louis Aragon and “Errantry, Exile” from Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant

Yale University Art Gallery

2024_10_24

Palabramas: In the Jungle There is Much to Do by Mauricio Gatti and “Solidarity and Storytelling: Rumors Against Enclosure” by María Berríos

Flip Zang

Ridgewood

2024_10_21

Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity by Marc Augé

Czarina Ramos

Times Square

2024_09_30

“The World is Unknown” by Carolyn Lazard and “Notes Toward a New Language: on La Borde” by Cynthia Cruz

Ariel West

Roosevelt Island

2024_08_18

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote and In Defense of Looting: a Riotous History of Uncivil Action by Vicky Osterweil

Ariel West

Lower Manhattan

2024_07_23

Everything for Everyone: an Oral History of the New York Commune 2052–2072 by Eman Abdelhadi and M.E. O’Brien

Ariel West

Greenpoint

2024_06_04

Communal Street Poetry: excerpts from Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism by Nadya Tolokonnikova

Amalia Mayorga

Lower East Side

2024_05_14

A Survival Guide to Living Under Total Surveillance by Laura Poitras and “The Right to Look” by Nicholas Mirzoeff

Amalia Mayorga

Greenpoint

2024_03_19

Utopia by Bernadette Mayer

Amalia Mayorga

Bushwick

2024_02_20

Revolutionary Letters #1, #34, and #106 by Diane Di Prima

Amalia Mayorga

Bed-Stuy

2024_01_30

“Poetry is Not a Luxury” by Audre Lorde

Amalia Mayorga

Bushwick

2023_12_12

Excerpt from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx

Amalia Mayorga and Peter Schmidt

East Williamsburg

2023_11_06