Urban Folk Art: Performance, Politics, and the Right to the City

David Freedlander surveys a variety of performance events designed to reconfigure the relationships between urban space and urban dwellers in New York City. He describes a burgeoning guerrilla performance culture—from kicklines on the steps of the New York Public Library to impromptu road soccer matches conducted with a flaming ball— aimed at reclaiming the city, resisting processes of gentrification, homogenization, and corporatization.