What does it mean to listen to the Lower East Side? Artist Aki Onda joins us virtually, together with New York–based collaborators, for a gathering featuring field recordings and archival films from the neighborhood’s community gardens. The event builds on Onda’s 2020 project Silence Prevails: Lower East Side Community Gardens During the Pandemic, which reimagines listening as an expansive act—attuning to the environment, layered histories, and the voices of those connected to these green spaces.
Onda invites longtime neighbors and collaborators to share their own relationships to the gardens: Maylyn ‘Zero’ Iglesias reflects on the work and legacy of the late photographer Marlis Momber, while artist Brigitte Engler discusses the folded cloth prints workshops at the Green Oasis Community Garden. Together, their contributions form resonant portraits of these living community spaces—sites as layered and multivalent as the gardens themselves.
