Coco Fusco, professor in the School of Art, has created a video that will be shown on select LinkNYC screens this year from October 5 to November 5, election day. Fusco’s project, entitled Everyone Who Lives Here is a New Yorker, focuses on public perception of newly arrived migrants in New York City and is featured as part of the 20th anniversary of More Art, a nonprofit that commissions socially engaged public art. Broadly known for her interdisciplinary art practice that over the last several decades has been concerned with the themes of colonialism, power, race, gender, and history, Fusco will address the ways that immigration to New York, which has been constant since the city’s founding, is currently being recast by conservative political groups as a crisis that threatens city life.

An animation composed of still photography, Everyone Who Lives Here juxtaposes classic images of early 20th century immigrants by the photographer Lewis Hines (1874–1940) with her own photographs of recent arrivals to New York. Though originally shot in color, Fusco converted her images to black and white, replaced backgrounds, and added filters to allude to the silent film era and demonstrate continuity between the migrants from both eras.

“New York City was built by immigrants and its vibrant culture is composed of contributions from the many cultures that coexist and mingle here,” said Fusco, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum, among many others. “Forty percent of the city’s population is foreign-born. Immigrants bolster the city’s workforce, making crucial contributions to the city’s economy, gastronomy, linguistic diversity, and street life. Our city’s guarantee of universal housing and universal education is under threat by those who seek to demonize and problematize the presence of immigrants, overlooking the reality that New York regularly receives tens of thousands of immigrants annually and succeeds in integrating them.”

The project will be unveiled on October 5 where the animation will be seen in the Union Square area on the screens of 10 LinkNYC kiosks. Its launch is part of a day-long festival featuring performances by Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, Xenoduo, and food provided by La Morada, a mutual aid project and restaurant in the Bronx that works to support Dreamers and refugees, along with a new publication by artist, writer, and organizer Noah Fischer as part of his New York 2044 series, also commissioned by More Art.,