(sub)urban homicide
This seven-month, public intervention project was designed in response to the 54 homicides that occurred in Rochester, NY, in 2005, hence naming it the murder capital of New York State
I started the project by marking the exact location of each of the 54 murders across a map of Rochester. I then traced the locations on tracing paper, flipped the tracing paper over to the other side of the city, and superimposed the red dots across the suburban neighborhoods (primarily high income, white communities). I then visited each of these [fictional] suburban homicide sites and placed a memorial on location for each victim. The mirrored homicide sites included golf courses, front lawns of mansions, supermarket parking lots, school playgrounds, town parks, and church steps. Each memorial included an image of the victim and the victims name, age, race, date, cause of death, and his or her chronological number in relation to the 54. The project intends to bring sociopolitical awareness to communities that may otherwise be unaffected by the rising incidents of violent crime in their own city.
The intention of this project is not to blame anyone for their lifestyle or socioeconomic status, but rather to bridge the gap by presenting a fictional scenario to our wealthiest citizens: “What if this were happening in our prosperous neighborhoods? What decisions would be made then?”
