WEST VILLAGE WALKING TOUR
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This video is part of the experimental documentary project Parallel Lines, which traces the development of the High Line–a park on New York City's West Side–and the multiple neighbourhoods it traverses. In researching how the activity of representation, urban planning and social justice have constituted public space, we worked with FIERCE (Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment), an organization led by queer youth of color, whose activism in the West Village and the piers have engaged the queer histories of these neighborhoods, and redirected their urban development.
The content draws from FIERCE's West Village Walking Tour, where members, allies and donors are introduced to sites with historical and political significance for FIERCE's campaigns and community organizing. These include Stonewall Inn, Lucille Lortel Theatre, Northern Dispensary, and future sites of action such as Pier 40, a possible location for FIERCE's queer youth center. In 2010, Parallel Lines built a studio in Queers for Economic Justice's offices (a FIERCE-allied organization), to stage and shoot FIERCE's tour preparation; following which each tour venue was filmed, and actions conducted along the stairwells and empty lobby of Pier 40– bracketing the material and geographical possibilities of political action, with spaces of rehearsal, transition and projection.