Collective Equipment
Sara Dean
2026 Summer Residency
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Collective Equipment engages Governors Island as an edge-of-grid space–periodically and proximately connected to New York City’s power, internet, and transportation networks. Through a series of handcarts, moving blankets, and micro-infrastructure installations, the project is a mobile prototype of localized autonomous systems. Together, the pieces directly engage public space–moving, resting, communicating, navigating–as well as offer platforms for experiments in situated networks. The handcarts are constructed from bicycle wheels and lightweight wooden framing. They are outfitted with various functions–a land sail, a harvest table, a mobile radio. The blankets are printed with calibration symbols proposing futuristic aerial communication and they serve as listening areas for the microFM radio. The handcarts move through the landscape as an invitation for direct participation and a future of more autonomous, situated, and experimental relationships to public space and local infrastructure.
COLLABORATORS/SUPPORT
Thank you to Beam Center for use of their workshop facilities.
People
