Touring NYC with an Ecuadorian Map

I run across Argentinian poet Maria Negroni’s “Buenos Aires Tour.” The project behind this book encopassed photographs and audio as well, captured by other artists. All three dimensions were meant to reveal unespected details of the city. The authors were determined to create a route different from the traditional tourist guides, which meant that they would not be guided by significant places, buildings, or objects. FInally, they found their path by breaking a glass over a map of Buenos Aires, and using the fracture lines as the markers of their itinerary. 

My focus in this project will be the ecuadorian people living in NYC. I have thought of ways in which to incorporate the ideas behind Negroni’s project into mine, though there are some fundamental differences. For instance, In “Buenos Aires tour,” any place in the city worked fine in order to describe the argentinian dayly life.  In a city where ecuadorians are a minority, to randomly choose a place wouldn’t work out. However, i think that what moved Negroni to capture just whatever neighborhood chance dictated, was a need to move away from stereotypes. Something like a desire to see what happened once one stopped telling oneself what the Buenos Aires people, any people really, is like or does or inhabits.

So I have narrowed down my focus and have come up with an alternative to the broken glass over the map. First, i will focus only on ecuadorians who are working. The first people i will approach will be informal workers. I have seen them at Flushing park, at a Brooklyn subway station, and around Williamsburg. They do exactly what they could have been doing in the streets of Ecuador: selling cheap dvd’s, peeled oranges in plastic bags, or fried pork rinds and corn. I hope i can get to talk to at least three of them. This “interview” will be important, because i want to ask them to tell me what are the jobs and occupations they think haven’t been talked about yet. Is there an stereotypical story they disagree with? Who do they think should be photographed, interviewed, talked about amongst the ecuadorian workers in the city?  This will be my alternative to crushing a mirror over a NYC map: i’ll let my first interviewes help me shape my itinerary.  What i expect will happen is that i will know what is the sterotype they are fighting against, and will articulate profiles that challenge those assumptions.