Three doors. Three communities. Ninety years in sound. 

Hinge Figures is a public installation that explores the complex, layered histories of North Brooklyn through sculpture – doors, rescued from junk stores in the community – and sound – found sounds, historical recordings and original compositions.

Too often, we only know our neighbors by their door. Doors are the ultimate public expression of our private identity. In their peeling paint or new fixtures doors tell the histories of their tenants. Who lives/d behind the doors of your neighborhood? What is their story? How many hands have graced your own doorknob, before it was yours?

Hinge Figures is about cycles. And it is about our responsibility to the places we inhabit and to the people we share space with. It’s about communities in transition, and the shared moments that make them continuous. It’s about private experiences and their public manifestations. It looks back at the century of homemaking which allows us to live here today and forward to the cycles of migration, population and home-making that will follow us.

Hinge Figures in the news

Explore the histories of Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Bushwick from 1900 – today.

Click on the image below to download a list of sound samples used in this piece.

Send us a virtual postcard with the story of your own door, and we’ll share it here:

Postcards from the community:

vvitalny collaborated with Dan Edinberg, John McGill, Jorge Schuhmacher & Bernardo Schuhmacher on this project.

Hinge Figures is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc (BAC). The NYC Department of Parks and Recreation and the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn provided additional support.