THE KEEPERS Comes to Coney Island

The Keepers/ Coney Island is an environmental performance art intervention created by longtime NYC cultural provocateur, Ed Woodham – scheduled for Saturday, April 5. 2025, beginning at sunrise at the Coney Island beach near West 12th Street and continuing at several different Coney locations until 11am. Woodham is the founder/director of the twenty-year-old annual NYC visual and performance public art festival, Art in Odd Places that takes place each October across 14th Street Manhattan since 2005.

The Keepers – a durational still performative group action – aims to bring attention to the blatant disregard of Coney Island's history, ethos, and longtime residents by Thor Equities.  This billionaire developer is advancing to replace the Coney Island that the world has come to know and love, with a massive casino, hotel, and convention center that would cast shadows over the amusement area. 

   The Casino would create unsafe conditions, bring crime –  and destroy not only the cultural landscape but the quality of life of the thousands of residents.

  The future of Coney Island USA, the non-profit arts organization that is home to the Coney Island Museum, the world-famous Coney Island Circus Sideshow that produces the Mermaid Parade, could be put at risk. The Mermaid Parade, the nation's largest art parade and one of New York's most iconic and beloved events could be gone forever!

  The Keepers appear when life is out of balance with nature in response to the gentrification and rapid mass development of urban areas where the importance of the mixed-use district, the history of the area, and the natural environment has been ignored. The Keepers are a life form living on the border between animal and plant consciousness. They disrupt conventions, identities, and norms. The Keepers are aberrations in response to the rapid mass redevelopment of urban areas where the importance of the diverse community, chronicled past of the neighborhood, and the natural environment has been disregarded.”

Over the years, The Keepers have been spotted at various gentrified global sites in New York City at Penn Station neighborhood; Gowanus, Brooklyn; and Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens; several sites in Sydney and western Australia; Krakow, Poland, and Asbury Park, NJ.

This project is organized in partnership with the Coney Island, USA, and Coney Islanders Against the Casino.  The Keepers /Coney Island is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.