From My Window ...


   
   





and Other Places





                      
   Workshops               
      Fellows’Project  Other Places


It was October 2020 when I started this project. Back then, we were several months into the pandemic and still unsure what the next months or even years would look like. Personally, I was feeling adrift, having just moved to Brooklyn after years living in Queens and experiencing a life very different from what I expected when 2020 started.

A few months before, I had received an Andrew Mellon Fellowship from the Center for Humanities and I was supposed to develop a project with my students from City College on climate change and psychology. The problem however was that, due to the pandemic, I was laid off, and I no longer had students. So, there I was, on my living room, wondering what to do with the grant. And it was precisely from that experience of being looking from my window - both physically and metaphorically – while feeling a sense of isolation and connection that I decided to create this project.

The idea was simple. Create a space where the CUNY community could share and reflect on their own pandemic experiences through meaningful, creative, and art-based tools. As I am somewhat undecided person,and I could not choose whether I prefered to create a small and cozy space for a limited number of students or a public-facing project to reach the CUNY community at large using Twitter and Padlet as generative tools. Therefore, I decided to do both, and this website archives the memory of those interventions.

Scrolling through the website, you will immerse yourself in this sense-making project called "From My Window  ... and Other Places". These two aspects — the window and the other places — encapsulate the contradictory nature of what we experienced during the pandemic: being confined and yet connected to several other places around the world.  

The website was designed to be experienced slowly, with quietude and curiosity. As you explore the website, you will be invited to open and dive into different facets and memory artifacts created by from my window's fellows and the CUNY community at large. In the first part of the website, you will be introduced to From My Window, the experiences and poetic-art-based pieces created by seven graduate and undergraduate CUNY students. During Spring 2021, these seven participants and I met via Zoom in workshops, where we collectively learned how to draw, color, create digital collages, and write I-Poems. The memory of these storytelling workshops, as well as the individual pieces created by the each fellow are available here for exploration.

The second part of the website archives "Other Places." As we experienced during the pandemic, even in the most isolating times, we sought connection with people located in other places and this section documents that. You will be able to see a beautiful Padlet created by the CUNY community, which maps people’s affective relationships around the world. By exploring Padlet, you will find individuals who danced every week with their siblings and others who shared tea with friends thousands of miles away. Exploring the dots carefully is a warming experience of discovering the various creative ways people used to cope with isolation. After the Padlet, you will find the bi-weekly prompts we launched on then Twitter, inviting the CUNY community to share glimpses of their lives and how they were feeling at that moment. There are over 100 tweets in this bank of responses using the hashtag #CUNYFromMyWindow.


It was from our windows, connected to other places, that many of us witnessed the births of our friends' babies or their weddings. From our windows, connected to other places, many of us celebrated our own birthdays and the birthdays of friends and family, wishing we could be there, in person. And it was probably from there, from our windows and other places, that we shared our doubts about the future, milestones and accomplishments, losses, and a deep sense of disembodiment.

This year (2026), marking the sixth anniversary of the World Health Organization's declaration of a global pandemic, we are launching this website to host and archive a small portion of the complexity of that time and the ambiguity of our feelings. Here, we present our individual and collective efforts to make sense of what was happening while it was happening. I hope you will take your time and enjoy this project.

Fernanda Blanco Vidal
Phd Candidate at Critical Social Environmental Psychology Program
Former Fellow from the Teaching Learning Center and the Center for Humanities










“From my window, I have learned that we need a new language to describe the world around us—a poetic and critical language that helps us reimagine the future, language that incorporates visual media and the senses.”




“Realizing that other young academics were experiencing similar feelings of imposter's syndrome helped me see that patience was necessary and that the slow progression of my career was not something self-inflicted but a symptom of the socio-economic strains during this time.”




“From my window in Staten Island,  I have learned to be in community
with my neighborhood and sit with the pains and joys of 2020.”






Workshops

 








I-poem


Based on a feminist methodology, three beautiful poems were created from CUNY students, faculty and institutional anonimous emails.  









Show Me a Story

Guided by the cartoonist Tracey Berglund fellows learned how to draw and create illustrations to tell stories.








Digital Collage


The multimedia artist Ryan Seslow taught fellows how to use MMMPage to create digital collages and produce creative storytelling projects.







“I’ve captured so many moments in my living space and neighborhood home since the covid crisis began, so I chose to interpret the prompt literally, “from my window” or “at my window” in order to contain or delimit the bounds of my reflection and imagination.”



“Realizing that other young academics were experiencing similar feelings of imposter's syndrome helped me see that patience was necessary and that the slow progression of my career was not something self-inflicted but a symptom of the socio-economic strains during this time.”




“After being in lockdown for so long it was really interesting to get to know so many people with different backgrounds. Every person brought their own personality and spice to the meetings.”



Fellow’s Projects









   Kara Pernicano





 Bengi Sullu

  • Teaching Manifesto in Times of Crises


  Frederieke Windel
  • From My Window in Staten Island






 Izamar Gallardo

  • Plant(ing) Communities



 Ashley Marinaccio

 * Stillness in NYC




  Frederieke Windel

  * Pandemic  Instragram













“From my window, I have lost loved ones, three too many this year; I have accompanied others whose loved ones became ancestors.”



“From my window, I can see both the history and the future of our neighborhood meeting in one place. ”




“As I look out of my window, which is about four feet tall and faces south, I watch masked people walk toward destinations unknown to me. I want a word for where they are going and a word for what they are thinking or forgetting.””


... and Other Places









Relational Mapping


Using a Padlet, CUNY community showed their affective connections around the world.  While exploring the map, don’t forget to click on the dots to see several meaningful ways people used to deal with the physical distance.















Twitter Archive   



For nearly 14 weeks, the From My Window posted bi-weekly prompts on Twitter using the hashtag #CUNYFromMyWindow. Check to see the twitter archive with almost a hundred tweets from CUNY community.
    






“ I loved that our meetings had a very flexible format in which we were encouraged to discuss the conditions we were living (and working in). I think how those were facilitated was my favorite aspect of them. ”