An exhibit presenting work that explores the impact of interiors on civic and urban life. The work was produced by AAS Interior Design students collaborating with activist community groups in Brooklyn to turn Williamburg’s Engine 212, a defunct FDNY building, into a community and arts center. The exhibition itself is designed as a place of community interaction, with a series of evening public programs.

Opening Wednesday September 15, 6pm
Exhibition runs 15 to 25 September
Aronson Gallery, 66 5th Avenue

Public Programs for ‘Engine 212: An Activist Interior’:
— Sept 20, 6pm Monday: John Hawke presentation, respondents: Radhika Subramaniam and Alan Bruton
— Sept 21, 6pm Tuesday: ‘Design Activism, Enacted’: An evening of films and video shorts presented by Amanda Schachter, SLO Architecture.
— Sept 24, Noon Friday: Bye Bye Benches, A Parallel Event at the Engine 212 organized by NTHCCC , benches are trucked to Engine 212 for a future of use there by the Williamsburg community.
— Sept 24, Friday: 8 PM Parallel Event at Engine 212, Williamsburg organized by NTHCCC. Installation by Aslihan Demirtas & Nandini Bagchee. Benches will be trucked to Engine 212 for future art events use.
— Sept 25, 12-4pm Saturday : Closing with students taking the work off the walls and making the book of ideas. Day event.

The Film Program for Sept 21, ‘Design Activism, Enacted’,
Sept 21, 6pm Tuesday

1. Berlin Wall
Surveillance Camera Players, 1999. 5:18 minutes
The Surveillance Camera players attack the prevalence of security
cameras in public places with a theatrical enactment for the cameras
on 52nd street in midtown. The security guards who try to remove the
SCP find themselves under the scrutiny of the camera.

2. Alquiler de Azoteas, (Roof Terrace Rentals)
Santiago Cirugeda, Recetas Urbanas, 2007. 6:50 minutes
Santiago Cirugeda demonstrates how to install easily dismantled
apartments clandestinely on the roof terrace of a building, as a
solution for providing low cost housing.

3. Nivelado, (Leveled)
Guillarme de Meniux, 2007. 8:14 minutes
De Meniux films the installation of Santiago Cirugeda’s “Chicken
House.” A 300 sq ft home is built by a group of friends in an empty
city lot over the course of a single day. The unit can be taken down
and reinstalled in another lot as needed, providing affordable housing
for those with limited means, by avoiding property taxes and the fees
of the housing market.

4. Bronx River Crossing: Columbus Day 2009
Jake Hubbard, 2010. 6:03 minutes
A group of educators, architects and a local high schooler experience
the blighted lower Bronx River Waterfront and its industry firsthand
when they paddle a weathered giant raft depicting the Bronx River
Watershed down the Bronx River and submit it for recycling at Hunts
Point. In the spring, a hundred local youth and mentors built the
artwork, to learn about their waterway and seek its renewal, escorting
the raft on its maiden voyage downriver amid a flotilla of canoes.

Full Length Feature
Pretty Dyana
Boris Mitic, 2003. 44:59 minutes
An intimate look at Gypsy refugees in a Belgrade suburb who make a
living by transforming Citroen’s classic 2cv and Dyana cars into Mad
Max-like recycling vehicles, with which they collect cardboard, bottles
and scrap metal. These modern horses are much more efficient than the
cart-pushing competition, but more important – they also mean freedom,
hope and style for their crafty owners. Even the car batteries are
used as power generators in order to get some light, watch tv and
recharge mobiles! Almost an alchemist’s dream come true! But the
police doesn’t allways find these strange vehicles funny.