New Land Plaza: You Can’t Beat a New York Original looks at the spatial effects of the criminalization of informal markets and the contemporary repercussions this has on sidewalks and across the facades of Lower Manhattan. Over the course of the exhibit, Canal Street Research Association will attempt to “bootleg” a historic Canal Street counterfeit bust, by tracing the bust’s historical antecedents in order to understand current-day conditions. Anchored in Ming Fay’s seminal Monumental Fruit public artwork honoring street vendors, the archival and speculative research for this re-staging takes various modes: resurfacing of Fay’s proposals and artworks, creating a modular display system in collaboration with architectural collective common room, and pursuing an active intervention on Storefront’s facade. Canal Street Research Association is currently offering Storefront as ad space to mimic the increasingly frequent Lower Manhattan phenomenon that prioritizes buildings as billboards. This gesture attempts to invert the typical flow of corporate funding by redistributing any resources accrued through this experiment to support on the ground advertisers for luxury fashion houses: shanzhai luxury vendors themselves.
