A 20-year art and advocacy working group on the changing city, formed in 2016. New work at Center for Performance Research June 28-30 2024.
Newest work:
Perfect City: FOR SALE, June 28-30 2024.

ABOUT

WHO WE ARE
Perfect City was instigated in 2016 by playwright Aaron Landsman. Housed at Abrons Arts Center on the Lower East Side of New York City, our work includes performances, mapping exercises about belonging and avoidance, roundtable discussions, writing, and research on street harassment and gentrification. Now in our fifth year, undaunted by the pandemic, we remain committed to envisioning and enacting cities for everyone, civic engagement for the most marginalized, and reinventing public space by and for the people who live together here.

WHY US?
People who grow up in cities are natural born urban planners. We have to be. We ride public transit before we are even born; we use creative strategies to navigate invisible and visible boundaries as we go through our days. But our needs and our narratives are not at the table when decisions are made about zoning, planning and which neighborhoods are in the crosshairs of development.

OUR PRINCIPLES
Rather than build from a specific formal aesthetic, we made principles to work by, that try to do away with some of the hierarchies that dominate art-making. Our principles include Emotional Amnesty (no one holds what you say against you), Aesthetic Amnesty (no one’s ideas about art are better than anyone else’s), Compensation for Labor (self-explanatory but bears repeating), Logistical Flexibility (you come and go when you can), and Art Grows from Necessity (we don’t know exactly what that means either).

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD
Abrons Arts Center has been part of the Lower East Side and Chinatown for 125 years. Even if you are not from here, a lot of families in the US have a history with this neighborhood. It’s like a microcosm of America: diverse, vibrant, complicated, rich in history. And it’s changing. Fast. Our neighborhood is disappearing before our eyes. Perfect City is a window into the vital mix of voices and views that are often cleaned up when the city is gentrified.

NEWS

PERFECT CITY FOR SALE, 2024

June 28-30

See us at The Center for Performance Research!

Perfect City: FOR SALE celebrates our work together and separately over the past two years, as we’ve been supported by Creative Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Plan. Jahmorei Snipes, Tiffany Zorrilla and Aaron Landsman are each showing new work in progress, and we’re doing some roundtable and mapping all weekend too. Come see us in the gallery, in performance, in your city. Click the link for all the details.

Perfect City: FOR SALE is supported by Creative Rebuild New York’s Artist Employment Program, and by the amazing staff of Abrons Arts Center and Henry Street Settlement.

PERFECT CITY IS SUPPORTED BY THE ARTIST’S EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM AT

CREATIVES REBUILD NEW YORK

FIND OUT MORE HERE!

CRNY is a new program funded by The Mellon Foundation, that puts artists on salary at non-profit organizations. This spring we received the amazing news that three working group members (Aaron Landsman, Jahmorei Snipes and Tiffany Zorrilla) were awarded staff positions at Abrons through this program. We are beyond grateful and look forward to sharing more of our plans and schemes soon!

OUR WORK

THE CATCALLING PROJECT – In 2017, frustrated that Perfect City’s first projects had been led by men in the group, working group members, Tiffany Zorrilla and Jahmorei Snipes began a project researching the relationship between catcalling and gentrification. What they found were rhetorical and geographic ties between the two – the way we talk about colonized bodies and colonized land bear striking and harrowing similarities. Members of the Catcalling Project have been hired this year as part of an international study on community safety and resiliency at NYU called Confident Futures.

(IN)VISIBLE GUIDES – Since 2019, Perfect City working group members have worked with women at a neighborhood family domestic violence shelter on mapping, visioning and storytelling work. We are now developing (In)visible Guides as a public art work in collaboration with local artists, advocacy for organizers, and mutual aid for shelter residents. Our goal is to imagine new ways our non-profits and cities can support vulnerable populations.

AVOIDANCE MAPPING – this exercise came out of a meeting this fall. It’s a way to identify unconscious bias, the sophisticated ways we know about where to go and who to steer clear of, and how there are many cities mapped onto one concrete location. Avoidance Mapping has been done as a workshop with the Architectural League, with students from middle school through graduate school, and in several US and foreign cities.

ARTICLES – UrbanOmnibus and Longleaf Review have published our writing. Look for new articles coming soon to a publication near you!

OUR TEAM

Aaron Landsman

Aaron Landsman makes live performances and other encounters. Based in New York City he has performed with many artists locally, nationally and internationally. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and teaches part time at Princeton.

Tiffany Zorrilla

Tiffany Zorrilla is a Dominican woman who was born and raised in the Lower East Side and currently resides in El Barrio in Harlem. She is a full-time student at CUNY Hunter College with a major in English Criticism and minor in Music. She created and performed PAINT; a piece about the historical colonization and philosophical views of women’s bodies in the public scope at the Perfect City Fall Launch. She joined Perfect City in 2016 and has been an active working member since. Tiffany is a co-founder of The Catcalling Project hosted at Abron’s Arts Center and New Women’s Space. Her work is published in Urban Omnibus and Arts Everywhere. Tiffany’s favorite past times include, writing poetry, singing jazz tunes, and playing piano.

Tyler Diaz

Tyler Diaz hails from Long Island City. He has lived in most neighborhoods in Queens through out his life, so he is a true Queens native. He has a passion for theatre and music. He is composer and song writer as well as an actor.

Jahmorei Snipes

Originally from El Barrio, Jahmorei Snipes is a born and raised New Yorker who currently resides in Harlem. In 2018 she graduated from Marymount Manhattan College where she received her BFA in Acting with a minor in Political Science. Jahmorei is one of the three creators of The Catcalling Project. She currently works as a NYC actor, social media manager and an active working group member of Perfect City.

Jaime Maitin

Jaime is a Brooklyn native. He has a deep love for New York, poetry, and skateboarding. He is an urban observer for Perfect City and the rest of the world.

A 20-year art and advocacy working group on the changing city, formed in 2016. New work at Center for Performance Research June 28-30 2024.Newest work: Perfect City: FOR SALE, June 28-30 2024.