Abolitionist Benches x Culture Push

A community event about community safety and abolition, highlighting the abolitionist benches and paper alchemy created at Recess Art. Artists and community members will share food and chat about abolition and what we can build together in this time of policing and jailing in NYC. Assembly Fellows led a community safety workshop, and there was an in depth discussion of projects “Abolitionist Benches” and “Paper Alchemy.”

Artist Talk-back

Artists include: Sara Zielinsk, and Recess Fellows, Clay, Baruch, Tai, Wow, and Ana

Abolitionist Benches is a series of conversations and a series of benches. Abolitionist Benches will be a series of benches that serve both as a nexus for conversation about the current state of incarceration in New York City and as a place of respite. As we watch the demolition of jails across four of the city’s boroughs as part of the city’s plan to “close Rikers,” we think about what we can build and how we can care for one another in the absence of carceral structures and systems. We think about, collect, and repurpose materials that oppress. Accessibility and shared space that invites the public in are central to this project study. Every place to sit in the city that is not hostile architecture resists ableist forces. Our benches do so intentionally.

Paper Alchemy is an renegade recycling project created at Recess art with Assembly community members. In this place, we subvert the carceral surveillance state through a tender process of washing and cleaning dirty cop materials and transforming it into paper. This project transforms symbols & propaganda of oppression into beautiful abolitionist paper sheets. In the process of cleansing the discarded materials, we infuse each step with care and tenderness. This act of purification becomes a communal experience together in a shared commitment to reclaiming natural materials and dismantling oppressive systems. As the paper is washed and cleaned, it undergoes a metamorphosis, shedding its previous associations to re-emerging as a symbol of resistance.