Statues in Society: Intra-Actions, Thing Power, and Sexual Violence

Isabella Grecco

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After reading this resource, please refer to the bottom for self-reflection questions to assist with your next steps!

Introduction

How do everyday objects shape the way we think, behave, and relate to one another?

In this illustrated zine, Isabella Grecco explores what happens when people repeatedly touch and interact with public statues. Looking at examples from New York City, Dublin, and Bremen, she examines how seemingly harmless traditions can reinforce deeper, problematic social patterns related to gender, power, and public behavior.

Drawing on the academic ideas of Karen Barad's intra-action and Jane Bennett's thing-power, the zine invites readers to see public monuments as active participants in a community's stories, habits, and values; in other words, it’s myth-making.

This project is an assembly of art, philosophy, and social inquiry to help us look more closely at the spaces we share and the cultures we create in the designed world.

This zine was presented as a learner-to-learner discussion at our Regeneration Symposium on April 10, 2026, led by Professor Anthony Dandridge (SUNY New Paltz, Black Studies). In a reflection, he writes that here:

"Students aren't spectators. They're co-creators: posing bold questions, producing insight, and forging new synaptic pathways across the intellectual community."

The zine is an example of student inquiry. Grecco investigates a real-world question and creates new knowledge through research, observation, writing, and visual storytelling. As Dandridge writes:

"Interdisciplinarity isn't an optional extra; it's foundational."

Like other sustainability topics, this resource asks how we might live peacefully together and brings together ideas from art, philosophy, public history, gender studies, and civic engagement to explore an issue that cannot be understood through a single discipline alone.

KNOW

Ideas

Intra-Action

Karen Barad's concept of intra-action suggests that people and things help shape one another through their relationships.

In this view, a step beyond interaction, a statue is an active agent. The meanings attached to it emerge through the ways people engage with it over time.

Thing-Power

Jane Bennett's idea of thing-power suggests that objects influence what happens around them.

Objects attract attention, encourage behaviors, carry stories, and shape human actions. They aren’t alive, of course, but they’re not entirely passive either. They’re invested with our energies and imaginations.

Public Space and Culture

Public monuments help tell stories about who matters, what is valued, and how communities understand themselves.

This zine encourages us to look closely at everyday traditions and ask what messages they communicate.

Sustainability Connections

Many people think sustainability is only about the environment. This resource reminds us that sustainability is also about people, relationships, culture, and community. It’s the world we create, distinct from the concept of the planet as biosphere we’ve been given.

The zine explores social sustainability by examining how everyday practices can either strengthen or weaken cultures of dignity, respect, and belonging.

It also connects to personal ecology, the idea that our lives are shaped by the relationships we have with the places, objects, stories, and communities around us.

Just as ecosystems are formed through deep relationships among living and nonliving things, our communities are shaped by ongoing relationships among people, places, traditions, and material objects.

The zine encourages learners to think about how small actions, repeated over time, can create larger cultural patterns. This is a formative idea in sustainability and systems thinking.

DO

Observe a Public Space

Visit a monument, memorial, statue, mural, or public landmark.

Notice:

How people interact with it

Which parts receive the most attention

Signs of wear and change over time

What stories are being told

Whose stories might be missing

Record your observations through notes, sketches, photographs, or maps.

Investigate a Community Tradition

Choose a local tradition or ritual involving a public place or object.

Ask:

Why do people do it?

What values does it reflect?

How has it changed over time?

Who benefits from it?

Who might feel excluded by it?

Create a Counter-Monument

Design or propose a monument, installation, or public art project that tells a story you feel is missing from your community.

Consider what values it would represent and how people would interact with it.

BE

Observant

Pay attention to the ordinary things that most people overlook.

Curious

Ask questions about traditions, places, and behaviors that are often taken for granted.

Reflective

Consider how your surroundings shape your thoughts, actions, and relationships.

Responsible

Recognize that culture is created through everyday actions and choices.

a Co-Creator

See yourself as someone who can contribute new ideas, perspectives, and possibilities to your community.

Reflection Questions for Educators

• How do these forms of touch reflect current social structures?
• How do we assign power and meaning to “things” in our spaces in order to arise and create impact?
• How do we define “thinghood” in our communities, everyday spaces, and classrooms?
• How does this resource help learners see connections between people, places, objects, and culture?
• In what ways does this resource expand the meaning of sustainability beyond environmental issues?
• What local monument, public space, object, or community tradition could become the starting point for a similar learning experience?
• How might creative projects like this help learners become more observant, reflective, and engaged members of their communities?
• What does this resource suggest about the role students can play as researchers, storytellers, and creators of knowledge?