Aventurine (2013) Online
Aventurine is a meandering calm around the urban borough of Queens, NY, and along its edges. Technically an island, Queens is home to over 100 ethnic working class immigrants and long-time residents with diversely international roots. Aventurine is structured as an experimental travelogue of unidentifiable spaces of urban repose. Class and race play a role in how residents of Queens are not just perceived, but financially and culturally supported in urban planning. I wanted to make it absolutely luxurious to feel, and challenge how the borough is perceived, but with an eye on how we are defining what spaces we (re/de)construct as landscape, as a respite, and how residues of class, economy, race, and queerness intersect our expectations and preconceptions of public space.