WORTHLESSSTUDIOS Keeps the Line Open for Lives Lost to Police Violence

In an age of disappearing pay phones, one New York booth presented by WORTHLESSSTUDIOS is being asked to carry something heavier than conversation: memory.

Photography by Erick SalazarThis fall, 1-800 Happy Birthday, the public-art project created by filmmaker and artist Mohammad Gorjestani, arrives in Staten Island and Downtown Brooklyn, transforming upcycled phone booths into intimate memorials for Black and Brown people killed by police and systemic violence.

At Staten Island’s Tompkinsville Park, one installation centers Eric Garner, with a September 12 birthday celebration organized alongside his family and the E.R.I.C Initiative Foundation. But Garner’s story is part of a larger archive of remembrance. The installation gathers voicemails, photographs and personal tributes honoring figures including Dujuan Armstrong, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, George Floyd, and Oscar Grant commemorated through the project.

Over at The Plaza at 300 Ashland in Brooklyn, a second booth carries voicemails for all 15 people commemorated by the project, functioning at once as archive, altar, and meeting place.

In doing so, 1-800 Happy Birthday turns public space into archive, altar and gathering place, returning personhood to lives too often remembered only through the violence of their deaths. 

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1-800 Happy Birthday is currently on view through December 1, 2026, at Tompkinsville Park and The Plaza at 300 Ashland. Learn more about the project and plan your visit online.