Announcing Issue #21
Announcing Issue #21
We are very excited to announce the June/July edition of NYRA! Designed by Sophie Loloi and edited by Carolyn Bailey & Phillip Denny, Issue #21 features reviews and essays by Ibiayi Briggs, Gina Ciancone, Julian Harake, A.L. Hu & Nicolas Kemper, Brad Isnard, and Anna Talley—plus an interview with Irene Sunwoo and a conversation with Tatiana Bilbao. We also have a full-spread graphic of New York’s swimming pools drawn by Karolina Czeczek and a beautiful poster print of Alvin Baltrop’s Pier 52 (Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Day’s End” building cuts with two people), 1975-86. Previews below.
Issue #21 was printed on Risograph by a83. If you are a current subscriber, you can look forward to receiving your copy (encased in a custom envelope designed exclusively for #21) in the mail shortly. If you're not a subscriber, subscribe today to receive your copy, and we will mail it to you.
In the Issue…
Ibiayi Briggs, “Hauntings/Ghostly Architectures of Migration”
Haunting seems like a fitting description for the extraction and exploitation wrought by capitalism and reified through architecture. Through this lens, the distinction between ghost stories and haunted houses stories becomes a powerful analogy for societal correction.
Irene Sunwoo, “Interview: Exhibition-Making”
If somebody doesn’t like a show, that’s fine, as long as they have an opinion about it and can talk to someone about it, I think that’s meaningful and productive.
Anna Talley, “Time for Structure: The Biennale”
The question Biennale curator Hashim Sarkis asks of this edition’s exhibitors—“How Will We Live Together?”—is about as straightforward as it gets: In a world racked by a pandemic, rising nationalism, and an ecological crisis, how can we all live together in what is starting to feel like a global crucible?
A.L. Hu, Nicolas Kemper & Karolina Czeczek, “Why Does New York No Longer Build Public Pools?”
From 1900 to 1972, New York City built 77 public pools. Since 1972, the city has completed just three. What happened?
Brad Isnard, “Good News for You!”
I found the foreman and asked if they planned to cover the mosaic with new cladding. When he said yes, I tried to bribe the crew to take some of the tiles off for me, fearing that this powerful work would be destroyed altogether.
Alissa Lopez Serfozo, “One Year Later with Tatiana Bilbao”
The pandemic arrived and prompted those with privilege to realize how difficult it is to operate in our domestic environments 24/7.
Julian Harake, “On Day’s End”
It is no easy task to engineer a pencil-thin structure the length of a football field out on the Hudson River with no visible seams or connections.
Gina Ciancone, “The Road Not Taken”
Driverless cars do not solve our country’s gasoline addiction or our habituated reliance on four-wheeled vehicles to complete daily trips that could have been done on foot.
Phillip Denny, “Fast Theory”
“Why now?”: Because the present demands answers. While it may no longer make sense to speak of “the discourse” as if it were a single, grand conversation, it is clear that we urgently need a new economy of ideas that includes the broadest possible community of thinkers and designers, writers and readers.
Carolyn Bailey, “A Ruined Cathedral”
[Alvin Baltrop] spent more than a decade photographing the piers, authoring thousands of images that depict intimate encounters set against industrial decay, including the large-scale cut piece installed by Matta-Clark in an abandoned warehouse on Pier 52.
SKYLINE! Edited by Tiffany Xu, Nicholas Raap, & Jack Murphy
In London-based Edit Collective’s video, three women each operated separate nozzles connected to a single vacuum cleaner, while a narrator from the future described the achievements of total collective care: from corrupting the single-user design of household appliances (like the vacuum) to rethinking how governments calculate GDP. —Tiffany Xu
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Four desk editors run NYRA: Alex Klimoski, Phillip Denny, Carolyn Bailey & Nicolas Kemper. They rotate duties each month.
If you want to pitch us an article or ask us a question, write us at: editor@nyra.nyc
For their support we would like to thank the Graham Foundation and our issue sponsors, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and Thomas Phifer.