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Seaton Street Press

AS IS (EMERALD ST., PHILADELPHIA)

Kaitlin Pomerantz

2016

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AS IS (Emerald St., Philadelphia) is a document from a site-specific, time-based project that took place in the Kensington section of North Philadelphia, exploring vacant space, urban development, painting, participation, chance and change. The work began with the insertion of a painstakingly painted painting in a vacant lot, depicting the facade of an old factory building—precisely the type of building lost day to day to demolition. Placed beside that very factory building, the painting functioned as a kind of billboard announcing not what is to come, but instead, a witness homage to the present. After Pomerantz placed her painting in the lot, a slew of unplanned actions followed: the mimicking tags of a graffiti artist upon both the building and the painting, followed by the anti-graffiti task force of the City of Philadelphia who painted over both surfaces. A vernacular dialog ensued over the course of seven months between graffiti artists, the City, and the surrounding transitioning space, before the painting was impaled by a piece of construction debris from a neighboring construction site where luxury condos were being built. 

The newspaper was created as a document for neighborhood residents to get to see the story unfold. It was offered for limited time as a takeaway in a kiosk placed in the vacant lot, as well as at Little Berlin gallery. 

16-page color newsprint, 11 3/8 in. x 15 in., edition 1000.

Printed at Bartash Printing, Southwest Philadelphia.

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