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 eight 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. 2025 is a year of quiet expansion, with new partnerships, a synthesis of theatrical and visual tools, and a bourgeoning network for artistic civic action locally, nationally and beyond.

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).