Everything has a hidden cost. As they say in economics 101, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Tompkins Square Park, as we now experience it, may be a nice setting to eat lunch, however...

Since its inception in the mid nineteenth century, Tompkins Square Park, a 10.5 acre plot of land in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan’s East Village, has stood as a gathering spot for expressions of public dissent. The First National Railroad Strike of 1877 convened in Tompkins Square Park. Manhattan’s “hunger meetings” originated in Tompkins Square Park. Fast forward to 1988 and civil unrest at the hands of an oppressive government is boiling over again in Tompkins. At that time, the infrastructure around the park was getting bought by the city’s government and sold to investors. They knocked down old buildings, replaced them with luxury condos, and aimed to exchange their then current residents for wealthier ones. Gentrification. But many residents didn’t leave. They “squatted” in Tompkins.

Clayton Patterson, an artist and folk historian of the Lower East Side captured the proceeding events. In 1990, Clayton’s camcorder became a tool of resistance and witness, amplifying the voices of squatters in Tompkins Square Park while capturing, in raw immediacy, the violence and police brutality the city inflicted on them. Tompkins Square Everywhere draws on this archival footage to conjure the Tompkins Square Park of the past, inviting it into conversation with the Tompkins Square Park of today.

In Tompkins Square Everywhere, the artist explores the notion of the drummer as storyteller, sharing narration with various squatters. While the other narrators are personified by their image and spoken word sentiments, the artist is presented as an everyman who uses the park today. His image is hidden in plain sight in the contemporary recordings, while his word as narrator is spoken in a percussive language. Drumming is the glue that takes the viewer through various video and sound clips, instigating live sound design and video manipulation through percussive gestures. The drum is one of man’s most ancient communication devices. Peoples have sounded the drum to communicate with spirits, keep civilians in line, and alternatively, liberate one another. In a musical setting, the drums are the glue that bring disparate sounds into concert. As narrator, the artist uses the drum in this spirit to heighten the various footages’ emotional impact.

By blurring the boundaries between past and present, Tompkins Square Everywhere posits that gravity-laden moments linger, like a sticky residue, in the spaces where they occurred. For anyone that enjoys Tompkins Square Park today, TSE is an invitation to listen to the park’s soundscape through the lens of recalling histories. Even in superficially pleasant sonic events, we are reminded, with context, that the park as we know it today was a choice, benefitting some at the expense of others.