Zip Code Memory Project

Focus

Between 2021 and 2023, the Zip Code Memory Project sought to find reparative ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. Working across the zip codes of Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx, they gathered with community members to imagine how the losses of the pandemic can be acknowledged, mourned, and healed.

History

In the Fall of 2021, after many months of isolation and loss, we invited community members living and/or working in Harlem, Washington Heights and the South Bronx to gather and process the effects of the pandemic. How had it affected our lives? Where, in our bodies, did we carry the uncertainties, anxieties and fears it provoked, the harm we had suffered?  We met in the gardens and large safe spaces offered by the Cathedral of St John the Divine to talk, participate in trust exercises, write stories and poems, make collages and spirit cards together, and try to envision and rehearse better, more just futures. Although the pandemic was still with us, and new variants kept emerging, we kept collaborating to create a space where deep feelings of mourning and loss, of anger at the institutions that had failed us, of fear and of hope, could emerge and be expressed.

Collection

Through our workshops and conversations, we hoped to build networks of shared responsibility, solidarity, and belonging. Our roundtable discussions on “Reparative Memory,” “Why Zip Codes?” and “Chronic Lives” brought the inspiring work of memorial artists, demographers and public health experts into our conversations. As the first year of the project progressed and the pandemic again eased, we created IMAGINE REPAIR, an exhibition, and an event that included talks and performances. In the exhibition, we could listen to the voices and stories of New Yorkers and experience the transformative power of arts of witnessing. The film we created, TOGETHER, NOT ALONE, shows how a group of strangers accompanied each other in the work of remembering and grieving, in momentous and intimate instances of pain and of joy. In spring of 2023, film showings have served as occasions for discussions across the five boroughs on “Covid Three Years Later: What Have We Learned? Can we Do Better?”

Emphasis

New York City, NY

Time Period

Fall 2021- Spring 2023

Public Access

zcmp.org

Directors

Marianne Hirsch, mh2349@columbia.edu. Diana Taylor, dianataylorny@gmail.com

Contact Person(s)

Lee Xie, lee.xie@nyu.edu

Website

zcmp.org