“So each [art] space in East Village at that time in 1987 was basically a renovated apartment. Which was the case with Hal Bromm Gallery, which moved from Tribeca to the East Village following the trend. So the galleries moved in, together with so-called “yuppies,” meaning the more affluent young people who were moving into the city rather than the suburbs in order to be closer to their offices and studios and the media and financial kind of businesses. So of course you have a clash between poor people, squatters, and yuppies, art galleries. It’s clear that artists were part of this gentrification process, uplifting the value of properties, and eventually knowing or not knowing, mostly not knowing, what contributed to the coming of this new affluent class into the area. And galleries at the same time implicated in evicting and getting rid of people—poor people, squatters—and actually producing homelessness or displacing people from their own habitat.”

 
“‘Polis’ in ancient Greece was understood as the space of rights. It was famous in the world at that time for guaranteeing the right of the members of the ‘polis’ to freely speak and exchange their points of view—in the Agora, but also enjoying civic rights, like voting, for example, and various freedoms and rights guaranteed by the Republic. However, women, slaves and foreigners, to various degrees, didn’t have those rights or they had limited rights. So that means that Athenian democracy was very limited in terms of number of people who could enjoy it. The decision to call it ‘Poliscar’ rather than police car is just to emphasize the difference between the proper notion of ‘polis’ and the way that word became part of ‘police’ which is, of course, about keeping our public space civilized and protected. But we know very well about all of the abuses of police, especially now today.”