Occupy Police Blocks

A few days prior to the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the NYPD deployed a wall of concrete blocks across one side of Zuccotti Park, the former site of the movement’s most visible encampment. At a time when energy around Occupy was waning, the heavy-handed preparatory gesture caused a surge of discussion and excitement among Occupiers, who queried: “if the police consider the anniversary so important, shouldn’t we?”. We saw an opportunity to use police blocks as an architectural medium for communicating an affected reading of their gesture that reoriented energy toward the anniversary. Ours were carved from foam and spray-painted with the same colors and fonts the NYPD use.