Pedestrian crowd at Downtown Crossing, Boston, 2010s. Footage from Keith N. Hampton.
Design: Jingrong Zhang.
Free and open to all!
Join us for a midday screening exploring how public life has been staged, recorded, and remembered on screen.
Presence is a film installation by Jingrong Zhang, supported by the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT). Drawing on archival and cinematic footage across cultures and historical periods, the work assembles a "global supercut" of public gatherings: moments of solitude, chance encounters, street life, and collective assembly. As the montage builds from isolated figures to dense crowds, it invites viewers to consider how strangers come together in public space, and how those moments of shared presence have been captured on screen across a century of image-making. Every crowd on screen was once as present as we are now.
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Jingrong Zhang is a researcher and creative practitioner working across urbanism, complex systems, data, and art. At MIT, she used AI, computer vision, and visualization to study social behavior in public space, urban equity, and the relationship between cities and nature. Her work spans research and installation, from geospatial modeling to exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, exploring how data can function as both evidence and cultural expression.
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Photos and/or videos will be taken at this event. By entering and attending this event, you acknowledge and agree that your likeness may be included in photos and videos of the event and that those photos and videos may be used by MIT in connection with communications about MIT Open Space Programming or in other MIT communications, and/or shared with third parties, including on the Internet. If you do not agree to this usage, please notify a staff member when you arrive.
We are committed to creating an inclusive, accessible environment on our website and in person at our events. If you would like to request a disability-related accommodation, please contact us at openspace@mit.edu as soon as possible to allow us time to respond. Requests made less than 2 weeks before the start date of your program may not be able to be met in time.
With any questions, email us at openspace@mit.edu.
