I was in the East Village, in a tenement building on 13th Street, in the early 80s, my jr. undergrad year at NYU. So, a later era. Not a full-fledged grownup and not in the art scene. And not as far east. But our block (I lived with 2 other female acting students who were in my class at Circle in the Square Studio) was a bit sketchy (on our move-in day, a very old, very short, very gleeful in a nasty way guy exposed himself to the 3 of us as we were walking across the block in opposite directions -- we had to laugh at this simultaneously depressing and hilarious welcome to the neighborhood). Yes, to multiple, heavy-duty locks; yes to the steel pole that ran from the door to its little steel plate in the floor. And to never entering our kitchen at night, in the dark, without stomping our feet before turning on the light, so we might hear, but not have to watch, the massed ranks of roaches scatter back into the baseboards and god knows where else they came from. Also men playing dominoes at a rickety card table on the sidewalk, with salsa music tearing raggedly through partially blown speakers in the doorway of the bodega, lots of Spanish flying through the air day & night. And the evening we witnessed a stabbing on 2nd Ave when we were walking over to St Marks to see a theater piece. Spent hours at the precinct after the show, in a brown, grubby, open plan "office" of plainclothes policemen. Was there when the phone call came in from the hospital that the victim had died, and the charge was solemnly elevated to murder. (They'd caught the perpetrator moments after he'd stabbed the man with scissors.) Got to listen to the in-no-way accidental monologue/lecture from a middle-aged cop about how dangerous and wrong it was to have women on the police force, where, apparently, some poor Good Cop was sure as anything going to eventually get killed because his Lady Cop Partner wouldn't have his back/be up to the job. Barney Miller, it wasn't. Not even Kojak. Summer was fistfight weather, when people without ac spent most of their time on stoops and a lot of drinking went on. Fall was enough to make you believe you might actually find your way into a life in the theater someday, enough to make the City feel more like Woody Allen's Manhattan than Scorcese's Taxi Driver. We were so young, and so wrong, and so right to be both.
All this to say -- you really brought it all back to me with this marvelous piece.
I love reading about these early middle years on your art journey in the belly of the Art World Beast. Amazing cast of characters, including our 1975 roadie Taylor Field who gets mentioned.
If you follow Jerry Saltz on Instagram you will have seen a post about Florentina Holzinger, the Austrian choreographer and performance artist, born the same year as the baby mentioned above. I did not know her work. For your cultural education, it will be worth looking up her work, which, among other things, delves deeply into one of the questions raised in this post. Start here. https://www.artforum.com/columns/nadja-abt-florentina-holzinger-557625/
She comes out of a radical tradition that references the Austrian Actionists, circus, spectacle, Catholicism, but also seems influenced by Matthew Barney and maybe most of all by Pina Bausch, who was a truly great artist. I am also reminded of the kind of radical work that appeared in response to the nationalism and nihilism of World War I, originally at Cafe Voltaire in Zurich, that gave rise to Dada, and eventually, a wholly new conception of what art might be.
Ah, I wish! For '82-'83, I spent my sr year as an acting apprentice @ the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park -- launching the peripatetic period that took me to Stockbridge, Berkeley, Seattle, and Cleveland before returning to NYC in 1989. And landing here in Durham in 1999. Weird to me still that I've now lived in Durham longer than any other place...
I was in the East Village, in a tenement building on 13th Street, in the early 80s, my jr. undergrad year at NYU. So, a later era. Not a full-fledged grownup and not in the art scene. And not as far east. But our block (I lived with 2 other female acting students who were in my class at Circle in the Square Studio) was a bit sketchy (on our move-in day, a very old, very short, very gleeful in a nasty way guy exposed himself to the 3 of us as we were walking across the block in opposite directions -- we had to laugh at this simultaneously depressing and hilarious welcome to the neighborhood). Yes, to multiple, heavy-duty locks; yes to the steel pole that ran from the door to its little steel plate in the floor. And to never entering our kitchen at night, in the dark, without stomping our feet before turning on the light, so we might hear, but not have to watch, the massed ranks of roaches scatter back into the baseboards and god knows where else they came from. Also men playing dominoes at a rickety card table on the sidewalk, with salsa music tearing raggedly through partially blown speakers in the doorway of the bodega, lots of Spanish flying through the air day & night. And the evening we witnessed a stabbing on 2nd Ave when we were walking over to St Marks to see a theater piece. Spent hours at the precinct after the show, in a brown, grubby, open plan "office" of plainclothes policemen. Was there when the phone call came in from the hospital that the victim had died, and the charge was solemnly elevated to murder. (They'd caught the perpetrator moments after he'd stabbed the man with scissors.) Got to listen to the in-no-way accidental monologue/lecture from a middle-aged cop about how dangerous and wrong it was to have women on the police force, where, apparently, some poor Good Cop was sure as anything going to eventually get killed because his Lady Cop Partner wouldn't have his back/be up to the job. Barney Miller, it wasn't. Not even Kojak. Summer was fistfight weather, when people without ac spent most of their time on stoops and a lot of drinking went on. Fall was enough to make you believe you might actually find your way into a life in the theater someday, enough to make the City feel more like Woody Allen's Manhattan than Scorcese's Taxi Driver. We were so young, and so wrong, and so right to be both.
All this to say -- you really brought it all back to me with this marvelous piece.
Thanks Charisse, we must have walked past each other some days. We moved to East 9 1985, could see Theater for the New City from our back window
I love reading about these early middle years on your art journey in the belly of the Art World Beast. Amazing cast of characters, including our 1975 roadie Taylor Field who gets mentioned.
Also I had to look up the Tomkins Square riots of the past two centuries. History rhymes.
Really enjoying your writing, Craig!
If you follow Jerry Saltz on Instagram you will have seen a post about Florentina Holzinger, the Austrian choreographer and performance artist, born the same year as the baby mentioned above. I did not know her work. For your cultural education, it will be worth looking up her work, which, among other things, delves deeply into one of the questions raised in this post. Start here. https://www.artforum.com/columns/nadja-abt-florentina-holzinger-557625/
She comes out of a radical tradition that references the Austrian Actionists, circus, spectacle, Catholicism, but also seems influenced by Matthew Barney and maybe most of all by Pina Bausch, who was a truly great artist. I am also reminded of the kind of radical work that appeared in response to the nationalism and nihilism of World War I, originally at Cafe Voltaire in Zurich, that gave rise to Dada, and eventually, a wholly new conception of what art might be.
Ah, I wish! For '82-'83, I spent my sr year as an acting apprentice @ the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park -- launching the peripatetic period that took me to Stockbridge, Berkeley, Seattle, and Cleveland before returning to NYC in 1989. And landing here in Durham in 1999. Weird to me still that I've now lived in Durham longer than any other place...