Canal Street Research Association: Life on the Rented Island

In conjunction with Tina Girouard: SIGN-IN, Canal Street Research Association (CSRA) presents on five years of happenings in storefronts, lofts, and basements—life on the “rented island.” Drawing from both CSRA’s evolving practice and Girouard’s work shaping alternative artists' spaces, Life on the Rented Island reflects on histories, presents, and futures of New York’s “underground” ecologies.

Canal Street Research Association was founded in 2020 in an empty storefront on Canal Street, New York’s counterfeit epicenter. Delving into the cultural and material ecologies of the street and its long history as a site that probes the limits of ownership and authorship, the association repurposes underused real estate as spaces for gathering ephemeral histories, mapping local lore, and tracing the flows and fissures of capital. They have occupied storefronts, empty office buildings, a storage unit, and most recently a basement under Canal Street. The fictional office entity is operated by Shanzhai Lyric (Ming Lin and Alex Tatarsky), a poetic research and roving archival unit that take inspiration from 山寨 (shanzhai or counterfeit) goods to examine how bootlegs use mimicry, hybridity, and permutation to both revel in and reveal the artifice of global hierarchies.

Image: From the fantasy office art collection of Canal Street Research Association featuring Chinese egg carton shoes by Puppets & Puppets. Courtesy the artists. Photo by Daniel Terna.