The Illuminator

The Illuminator is an art-activist collective comprised of visual artists, educators, filmmakers, and technologists living and working in New York City. The collective has staged hundreds of projection-interventions in public spaces, transforming the street from a space of passive consumption and transit into a site of engagement, conflict, and dialogue. Their work calls attention to the many urgent crises that confront us, in support of the ongoing struggle for a more just, peaceful and sustainable world.

The Illuminator is an artist-activist collective committed to social, environmental, and political engagement and transformation. Their political principles help them draw boundaries to guide them on the projects they undertake. They fundamentally value an intersectional approach to justice and liberation: racial, climate, housing, economic, health, immigrant, gender, educational, labor, language, and disability. They believe that true change requires dismantling all systems of oppression.

City

New York

Country

United States

Region

N. America

Year of Creation

2012

Featured Project

Illuminating Housing Justice

The Illuminator was commissioned for a community-engaged art project through Fourth Arts Block (FABnyc) that took place in the first half of 2020. The initial plan involved working with local housing groups who organized in Community Board 3 (Lower East Side and Chinatown), but when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the project was postponed and the organizations involved shifted gears to deal with the devastation caused by the virus. Once the vaccine became available, the collective went to housing justice protests and tabling events to film outdoor interviews with housing activists. They brought the resulting video to a bustling corner in the Lower East Side in July of 2021, where the testimonies of both public and private housing residents were projected onto a school building across the street from a NYCHA park. In addition to the edited video, they opened up a live audio+video feed for more neighborhood residents to share their stories with passersby.

Instagram

Resources

Bishara, Hakim. “A Guerrilla Projection Urges NYC to ‘Cancel the Rent’ and ‘End Bail.’” Hyperallergic, 30 Mar. 2020, hyperallergic.com/550091/illuminator-covid-19/.

Bishara, Hakim. “NYC Artists Project Messages of Solidarity with Palestine.” Hyperallergic, 14 May 2021, hyperallergic.com/646114/nyc-artists-project-messages-of-solidarity-with-palestine/.

Horwatt, Eli, and The Illuminator Collective. “All of Our Grievances Are Connected: An Interview with The Illuminator Collective.” World Records Journal, no. 1, Article 8, World Records, 19 July 2018, worldrecordsjournal.org/all-of-our-grievances-are-connected-an-interview-with-the-illuminator-collective/.

Roche, Daniel Jonas. “Nycha Residents, SS9, the Illuminator, and More Art Leverage Manhattan Building in Protest against Fulton Elliott-Chelsea Plan.” The Architect’s Newspaper, 13 Dec. 2024, www.archpaper.com/2024/12/nycha-ss9-illuminator-more-art-light-protest-fulton-elliot-chelsea/.

More Information

theilluminator.org

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