Staging Riis

Abstract

Staging Riis explores the evolution of “The People’s Beach,” a compact swath of shoreline at the end of Jacob Riis Park that queer New Yorkers have gone to since 1941. For nearly a century, this fragment of coast has been a public queer refuge, perpetually on the brink of erasure. This project stages Riis for the next century, as a site of coastal and cultural resilience. The entwined calamities of swelling sea levels and rising persecution of queer people have, climatically and culturally, eroded the site. The existing and proposed gray infrastructures facilitate this erosion within a linear regulatory regime. Staging Riis, incrementally builds on the queer tradition of cultivating piecemeal spaces through acts of appropriation and deconstruction of existing systems. Through time, existing infrastructures serve as building blocks for hybridized systems that accept change as a means of resistance.