Windows are a conduit between the interior of the private domain and the public space outdoors. Whenever I stumble upon a building with boarded up windows, especially those around where I live in Bedford-Stuyvesent/Bushwick, the questions that I invariably want to ask are “What happened there?”, “How long has it been that way?” and “How long will it stay that way?”

Boarded up windows signal an end to all possibility and curiosity, as though the building’s fate has been forever sealed. Such destitution in my neighborhood can linger for years. During wars people were forced to board up their windows for safety reasons but couldn’t wait to un-board them. But would anyone dare to imagine, or look inside, these abandoned buildings of Brooklyn after they have been boarded up for unknown periods of time? My utopian vision for Brooklyn is simply to un-board all abandoned or confiscated buildings, so that I can resume imagining that someday, they will be occupied again.

- Eugenie Tung