On the Ground: Broadcasts | Threshold by Storefront for Art and Architecture

Storefront for Art and Architecture and Montez Press Radio presents the first episode of On the Ground: Broadcasts, titled Threshold. This episode explores the tensions between public and private space through a close look at New York City’s ground floor.

Architect Sol Camacho, former Cultural Director of the Instituto Bardi, reads from Lina Bo Bardi’s seminal text, Vitrinas. Artist Alvaro Barrington discusses the storefront as a threshold between life and work. Canal Street Research Association further explores their inquiry into billboards and the “facadification” of Manhattan in a four way chat with artists Nick Poe and Gabriela D'Addario, and Levi Eichenstein, CEO of Red Rock Outdoor. Journalist Nathan Kensinger and UPENN Media Studies professor Shannon Mattern engage in conversation around their respective works on the transformation of the city’s streets and sidewalks. Architect Germane Barnes expands on his long-standing research on Porch Politics.

Sound and Video Credits:
Brown, Barry Alexander (Director). (2010). Sidewalk [Film, excerpt] 20:20-21:18

Cohen, Jem (Director). (1996). Lost Book Found [Film, excerpt] 03:29-04:20

Fitzgerald, Kit and Sanborn, John with Van Tieghem, David (Directors). (1982). Ear to the Ground [Film, excerpt] 00:00-1:04

Houston Jr., Otis. (2020). I Like Where I Stay. On AMERICA [Audio file]

Wilson-Tanner. (2022). Sun Room. On 69 [Audio file]

About the Contributors:
Germane Barnes is the Director of Studio Barnes, a research and design practice that investigates the connection between architecture and identity. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences Black domesticity. 

Alvaro Barrington is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. Raised in the Caribbean and later Brooklyn, New York, Barrington harnesses abstract painting, embroidery, and site-specific installation to explore communal and personal histories and disrupt art historical narratives.

Canal Street Research Association is the fictional office entity of poetic research and roving archival unit, Shanzhai Lyric. Delving into the cultural and material ecologies of the street and its long history as a site that probes the limits of ownership and authorship, the association repurposes underused real estate as spaces for gathering ephemeral histories, mapping local lore, and tracing the flows and fissures of capital. 

Sol Camacho is an architect and urban designer and the former Cultural Director of the Instituto Bardi/Casa de Vidro Institution founded by Lina Bo and Pietro Bardi. 

Nathan Kensinger is a New York based journalist, photographer, filmmaker and curator, whose work explores hidden urban landscapes, including forgotten waterways, post-industrial ruins, environmental cleanups, and coastal communities endangered by sea level rise and climate change.

Shannon Mattern is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Media Studies and Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2004 to 2022, she served in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Media Studies at The New School in New York. Her writing and teaching focus on media architectures and infrastructures and spatial epistemologies.