Project with Ali Sajjadi, Sae-wook Huh and Engin Ayaz.
We were asked to gather ethnographic data. So we choose the ITP House where several of our classmates lives. The assignment called for us to be in character to a scenario. We approached the space and project as an arts collective, looking to transform the residential ITP House space into a work/live/gallery space. Our goals were to understand both the constraints of the space, but more importantly the identity of the individuals living at ITP House and how their ideas, hopes, aspirations, habits, personalities and relations with each other could inform the themes we would present at the space as a collective.

This is our findings:

Mick Hondlik started the ITP House during the past summer. His goal is to make this into an artist collective. In this photo is the ground floor living room which opens up onto Grand street in Williamsburg. Someday Mick has plans to turn this into a gallery space.

They’ve a spacious backyard. There’s already a movie screening there by one of ITP students.

We didn’t want to overlook the living aspect of the place. 3 people share this refrigerator/floor.

This is how Mick lives. Clothes rolled up, always ready to go.

We then ventured upstairs to the rest of the house. We met HanByul relaxing before the start of her day. She told us a lot about her experience so far in NYC, living at ITP House and being a grad student at ITP. Overall, she’s loving it!

One thing that we all noticed was space. As is the case in NYC, space is a huge commodity. For the ITP House we saw several bikes taking up a lot of interior space. With their lofted ceiling maybe a bicycle hanging system would do the trick.