the swamp

oriana on 8 May ’15

[I’m counting down to the release of the Brooklyn Spaces book by doing one mini-post per day, sharing teasers of some of the places you’ll find in it.]

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: music venue | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook

On an anonymous and very industrial block in East Williamsburg, the Swamp has been going strong for six years—an incredible run for a DIY venue. Shows are mostly punk and hardcore—Resistance Culture, the Degenerics, Reagan Youth, Death Mold, HR of Bad Brains, the annual Latino Punk Fest—and there’s also a regular “dirty reggae” night and some ska and rocksteady shows. Many are benefits for radical groups like Anarchist Black Cross, WIN Animal Rights, NYC Antifa, and the Wolf Mountain Sanctuary. “Our thing is not money, but community,” says Christian E., who runs the space. “We have a great group of people who follow us and come to all the shows, so we try to make each one a really awesome event.”

After such a long run, the Swamp is going to be slowing down on shows in order to refocus the space as a recording studio. There’s some awesome events planned for May and June to raise money for the Swamp’s new incarnation, so keep an eye on the Facebook page for updates.

Wlodarczyk Swamp 103

Want to learn more about the Swamp, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

285 kent ave

oriana on 11 Nov ’13

space type: music venue | neighborhood: williamsburg | active since: 2010–2014 | links: twitter

Update, January 2014:

No one expected 285 Kent to last forever, and news of its closing was just released. It’s not worth making any grand claims about the death of DIY or the condo-ification of Williamsburg; all those things have been said, and countered, and re-said, and re-countered. Whatever—the scene moves on, new venues will spring up, and the hyper-rich will galavant along the waterfront and probably not even know what went on there before they came.

285 Kent closing is kind of a big deal, though, even if only as a high-profile sign of the times. The space has been memorialized in some terrific oral histories over the last few weeks, from Animal New York to Village Voice to Fader, not to mention the one on Noisey made up of a pastiche of Yelp comments. They’re all worth a read if you want to get a little nostalgic.

***

Original post, November 2013:

One of the hubs of North Brooklyn’s DIY music scene, 285 Kent is an all-ages venue for cutting-edge music across genres. On the Williamsburg waterfront, across the street from the about-to-be-demolished Domino Sugar Factory, 285 Kent neighbors several other underground stalwarts like Glasslands, Death By Audio, Ran Tea House, and Cameo Gallery.

Trash Talk, photo by Day After Day

The space has seen several incarnations; in the mid-2000s it was Paris/London/West Nile, focusing on progressive electronic music, and before that it was Bohemian Grove (not the Bohemian Grove in Bushwick), hosting progressive raves. PLWN was started by the Shinkoyo Collective, an ever-expanding group of artists and musicians who were also behind the original Silent Barn and many more spaces across the country. Along with other Brooklyn DIY promoters, the space has been run at various times by Todd P., Babycastles, and John “Rambo.” These days 285 Kent’s booking and curation is handled by Ric Leichtung, who is also cofounder of Ad Hoc, a quarterly zine and network of taste-making music blogs.

Candy From Strangers, photo by Nicky Digital

This is the obvious point at which to mention the awful hyper-gentrification of Williamsburg, and the fact that no matter how beloved 285 Kent and other similar DIY institutions are, it’s hard not to be cynical about the likelihood that they will last much longer where they are. I guess the least pessimistic thing to say is this: go see shows at 285 Kent, as often as you can; get exposed to excellent, cutting-edge music and support the last gasp of underground Williamsburg before all that’s left is horribly shiny luxury glass condos and preposterously upscale bars for bankers.

But first check out my Q&A with Ric & Kait, who oversees daily operations.

Friends, photo by Richard Gin

brooklyn spaces: Is it a tremendous amount of work to run a space like this?
Ric: Yes, definitely. When I first started working here I was also writing for Pitchfork and Altered Zones, and it really snowballed. When you start something it’s difficult, and usually the more you work at it the easier things get. But 285 just keep getting higher and higher profile bands more and more often, and I couldn’t do it all myself. I needed a partner, and I was really lucky Kait came along.
Kait: He was starting his days at 9am writing, and then running a show until 4am. For months and months.
Ric: Yeah, but now it’s amazing. Kait’s the backbone.

Rival Mob, photo by Lukas Hodge

brooklyn spaces: If you had to be a bit reductive, what would you say is the musical personality of 285 Kent?
Ric: We basically do whatever we think is culturally relevant right now. We do a lot of buzz-y, hype-y shows, but we also do a lot of hardcore shows and progressive dance and experimental music nights.
Kait: There’s such a crazy variety. I can show up on Tuesday and work a rap show, Wednesday a local indie band, Thursday a rave, Friday a hardcore show. And it’s always really cutting-edge, underground stuff.
Ric: The goal is to create a space where there’s a lot of exchanging of ideas and cross-pollination. Lately a lot of punk and hardcore kids have been coming to the dance parties, which you really don’t see anywhere else.
brooklyn spaces: Do they dance?
Kait: Yeah! They just totally love music.
Ric: But then we also recently had a string of a really great hardcore shows. We hosted this festival our friend Adam Weitz put together, New York’s Alright, and it was very comprehensive, everything that is next level in that community.

Sharpless, photo from Village Voice

brooklyn spaces: Didn’t you guys do a big show here for CMJ?
Ric: Yeah we hosted the Pitchfork showcase, which was really special. But it was unofficial; we didn’t have any CMJ shows here this year because we’ve chosen not to participate in the festival.
brooklyn spaces: Is that something you want to talk about?
Kait: I think it’s something we should explain. My personal point of view—not affiliated with Ad Hoc or 285—is that buying a badge and not being guaranteed entry to a show? That kind of sucks. I think if you really want to see a band, you should pay the cover and support the artist. We don’t make a profit from the door. We cover our PA and staff, and the rest goes to the band.
Ric: In my opinion, the real issue with CMJ and other citywide festivals is that money only goes to the top-tier artists. Bands that should be getting $500 to $1,000 a show, they’ll be low-balled into playing for really cheap, in exchange for publicity or the opportunity to play with a really big band. The best things that were going on during CMJ this year were our Pitchfork showcase, the Arcade Fire warehouse show, and the Fader Fort, and none of that was official CMJ. It’s bullshit. They don’t pull their weight, that’s why we choose not to work with them.

What Cheer? Brigade, photo by Tod Seelie

brooklyn spaces: Okay, tell me about a particularly fun or crazy show you’ve had here.
Kait: One of my favorite nights was the Mutual Dreaming Future Times party. The promoter Aurora brought in this huge army-surplus parachute, and we hung it up inside, suspended by the pipes in the ceiling. It took hours to set up, but the place looked really, really cool. Then it turned out that there was a blizzard that night, but we still opened up because why not? And people came and were kind of stuck here, so we just partied all night, everybody in this giant parachute, in our own little bubble. It was amazing.
Ric: One of my favorites was Dreams 3.0. It was just a super forward-thinking lineup, with Pictureplane, Grimes, and Arca, who’s now producing for Kanye West. We’d done a show with this guy Arab Music a few months before, and he had such a good time that he just came back for no fucking reason to this already bonkers party, and he brought A$AP Rocky with him too. It was insane. The show went all night, Grimes didn’t go on until 3am. That’s probably the show we’ll be remembered for; it was just everything that was really really sick at that moment, in 2011, all at once. But we still do really cool stuff now, in 2013!

Tearist, photo by Chris Becker

brooklyn spaces: In some ways you bear a real responsibility, as one of the people driving this scene; you have to not know just what music is important now, but what will be important tomorrow and next month. Is that a lot of pressure? Or is it just really exciting?
Ric: I think it’s really exciting.
Kait: It’s scary sometimes, too. Sometimes I wonder, “Am I totally off on this?” But then: nope. We just do what we think is cool.
Ric: There’s this guy DJ Rashad who we really love, we started booking him a couple of years ago and no one would ever really come to the shows. And then all of a sudden people start listening to his album, and suddenly he’s the #1 electronic album from Spin, he gets a top-10 on New York Times last year, all this sudden acknowledgment. That felt really good. Or one thing I really love about this space is that I feel like we’re bringing dance and electronic music to the DIY punk-rock demographic. I wasn’t really interested in that kind of music before, but then I had some kind of epiphany and I realized this stuff is amazing and progressive in so many ways. I would say it’s kind of a weird secret agenda of ours to make dance music cool again.

Ice Age, photo from Stereogum

brooklyn spaces: I think when a booker is at the forefront of some genres, there is often an assumption that you’ll know what’s at the forefront of all the genres.
Ric: That’s what we hope.
Kait: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. On the weekends especially, we get people who have no idea what to expect, they just walk up and check out the show. We get people dressed up like they’re going clubbing wander into a noise show. And they’ll stay!

Pictureplane, picture by Andrew St. Clair

brooklyn spaces: I wonder how much longer that juxtaposition will be possible, with the way Williamsburg is going. I know it’s a bit played-out to talk about the death of this neighborhood, but being right here, with the Domino Sugar Factory about to get torn down across the street, how do you guys feel about it all?
Kait: I think it’s kind of cool, actually. I’ve had many conversations with Todd about this, because he did lay the groundwork for the DIY music scene in this area in the last decade. He’ll get really philosophical about it, very nihilistic. But I feel like all of this is bringing back that fuck-all attitude, which makes it really easy for us to just do what we want, you know? We have no idea what’s going to happen in two months, so let’s just make this place as cool and as fun as we can for as long as we can. It’s empowering. We’re laughing in the face of progress or whatever.
Ric: It’s true. It does sort of feel like there’s a death clock, but it’s okay.
Kait: Yeah, it’s like, fuck it. Fuck your death clock. Because it’s not like we’re just going to stop, even if we do lose this space. I can’t imagine Ric not booking shows, and I can’t imagine not working in a space like this. I’m here all the time and it’s just where I want to be. Sometimes it smells bad, sometimes shit breaks, but the staff is amazing, everybody works really hard to keep it all together.
Ric: It’s like a little family—not to sound too trite. And we’re planning other things all the time. We’re putting on a show in a church in LA with Julianna Barwick and Mark McGuire from Emeralds. And there’s going to be some pretty crazy stuff during New Year’s Eve—stay tuned for that.
Kait: Oh, I don’t even know about that. Is it DJ Rashad?
Ric: Maybe. It’ll be good.

285 Kent interior, picture by Nick Kuszyk who did the murals

***

Like this? Read about more DIY music spaces: Fort Useless, Death By Audio, Shea Stadium, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Bushwick Music Studio, Newsonic

exapno (metropolitan exchange building)

oriana on 14 Oct ’13

neighborhood: downtown brooklyn | space type: music coworking | open since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Founded by husband-and-wife composers Lainie and Jascha, Exapno is a coworking space for the musically minded. For a very low monthly fee, musicians (primarily “new music” composers) can rent desk space, giving them a quiet place to work on their music, network with other musicians, and give and attend performances. It’s built on the concept of a writers’ space, inspired by Paragraph in Manhattan, where Jascha was once a member.

Qubit performing; photo by Lainie

Interestingly, Exapno is just one of myriad small businesses currently residing in the fascinating Metropolitan Exchange building. The massive MEx—a 45k-square-foot, seven-floor former bank—is owned by designer Al Attara, who is striving to make it a creative startup hive. Attara has owned the building for more than three decades, but for years it was on the city’s “urban renewal” chopping block, meaning that it could be reclaimed and torn down at any time. About six years ago the building came off the list, and since then Attara has invited in a wide universe of creatives, from avant-garde furniture designers RockPaperRobot to bio research lab Genspace. The sixth floor is all architects; the fifth floor has several food importers, from chocolate to tea to fish; and the fourth floor is media-oriented, with groups like Seed Magazine and Good News Planet, a website that only prints good news. (To read more about MEx, check out this New York Times piece from back in 2011.)

MEx fifth floor, photo by Maximus Comissar

Working within this amazingly diverse community of creative entrepreneurs, Exapno is thriving—as much as it can. With a cap of around 20 musicians monthly, and restrictions such as the inability to leave instruments overnight or to put up walls or soundproofing, Exapno may have reached its growth capacity. Ultimately they may relocate to a space where they can have more control and freedom, but in the meantime they’re happily staying put. Exapno, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is always seeking donations, and the group is open to new members—find out more on their site. But first, read my Q&A with cofounder Jascha and musician member James.

Jascha & James on left, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What does Exapno mean?
Jascha: My wife Lainie is a huge Marx Brothers fan, Harpo in particular. In his biography, Harpo talks about how when he toured Russia in the ’30s, he would see posters advertising his show, with his name written in Cyrillic, and it looked like “Exapno Mapcase.” I think we’ve only ever run into one other person who got the reference.

brooklyn spaces: How did the space get started?
Jascha: Since at least the early 2000s, Lainie had been wanting to create a performance space that was cheap to rent out, and that could function as a community nexus, a meeting place for young musicians, a way to get into the scene. Eventually we met Al, the wonderful man who owns this building. He’s incredible; instead of turning this place into condos or office space and making millions of dollars, he has filled this sort of ramshackle building with startups and indie businesses and nonprofits, just because that’s what he believes in. Anyway, Al agreed to rent us the space for whatever we could pay, so it’s sort of by his good graces that we’re here at all.

Wet Ink, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What’s it like being a member here?
James: It’s an amazing resource and access to a great community. All musicians needs space where they can make noise or quietly write music that will one day become noise, and it’s awesome to be able to get that for such a low monthly fee.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What connects all the members? Does everyone write or make a similar kind of music?
Jascha: We rapidly discovered that with a really cheap rehearsal space, we had to find artful ways to deflect requests from garage bands or that sort of thing. That’s what’s nice about “new music”: occasionally it’s a little loud, but usually it’s like a string quartet, or a vibraphone and singer. It’s much more manageable in terms of neighbors.
James: It’s somewhat self-selecting. You can’t leave equipment here, you can’t make a lot of loud noise, so that disqualifies, say, a punk band that wants someplace to rehearse every night. Plus almost everyone I know in the “new music” community tends to be project-oriented, as opposed to in a definitive group. Which is why a resource like this is so important: we don’t have a whole band where each member can pitch in $20 a month for a space.
Jascha: There are a lot of things about music and musicians that are really quite antisocial—making lots of strange noise, leaving stuff everywhere, taking up lots of space with pianos and drum kits—so we’ve had to modify things. There’s a lot more we could be doing if we had a space we could control, but then we’d have to pay an awful lot of money. And actually, it feels like the people who mainly used the space two or three years ago are starting to move on to other things. Now I feel like the people who need the space are people we don’t know, so we need to work on getting the word out.
James: I’ve noticed a lot of new younger composers here. Suddenly there’s this new generation of really positive, spirited people doing all sorts of weird stuff, and a lot of it’s happening here.

String Noise, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any famous alumni?
Jascha: Within the modest world of the New York new music scene, sure. Dither is quite well known; they’ve been around for years and get props from major composers. They do an event every year called the Dither Extravaganza [this year’s is on October 26th, at the Gowanus Loft]. Our artistic advisory board also has some heavy hitters in it, like Morton Subotnick and Paul Lanksy.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship to the neighborhood?
Jascha: The location is awesome, it’s a great hub for music. Brooklyn Academy of Music has been here forever, and recently two major venues moved in around the corner: Roulette and ISSUE Project Room. But we’re proud to say we beat them here.

Sweat Lodge, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on being an artist in Brooklyn these days?
Jascha: Well, when we started this space, Lainie and I were living in Chelsea, but most of our music friends lived in Brooklyn, and increasingly the concerts we were going to were in Brooklyn too. The center of gravity for our scene—and so many other artistic scenes—has been shifting here more and more. Brooklyn is incredible right now; there’s just so much creative activity here.

Exapno rooftop, photo by Maximus Comissar

***

Like this? Read about other coworking and skillshare spaces: Time’s Up, Pioneer Works, Bushwick Print Lab, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, 3rd Ward, Brooklyn Lyceum, No-Space

brooklyn lyceum

oriana on 5 Aug ’13

space type: performance venue | neighborhood: park slope | active since: 1910 | links: website, facebook, twitter

This is by far the oldest space I’ve written about. It was built in 1910 as a public bathhouse, boasting 100 showers and the largest indoor pool in the country. You can still see evidence of its past on the façade: etched onto the top are the words “PVBLIC BATH,” and there are two entrances, one each for men and women. In the late 1930s, as part of a WPA project headed by Robert Moses, it was closed down, and then reopened in the early 1940s as a gym, which it remained for about two decades. After that it changed hands several times, going from a mattress warehouse to a transmission repair shop, among others. Then in 1994, Eric Richmond bought it to turn it into an arts center.

an early sketch of the Lyceum

In its current incarnation, the cavernous Lyceum plays host to an astonishing array of artistic events, from plays and performances to fitness classes and sprawling galas. Some highlights from the past two decades: performances from Fiona Apple, Polyphonic Spree, Yo La Tengo, Upright Citizens Brigade, Amanda Palmer, and Black Dice, plus festivals like KingCon Brooklyn, Oxheart’s Canvas, NY Zine Fest, and the Brooklyn International Film Festival.

The Lyceum also has a daytime marketplace for coffee and local products, and soon there will be coworking space available during the days as well. And the building is available for rental, so if you’re looking for a really unusual place for that’s steeped in Brooklyn history for your shindig, you’ve probably found it. In the meantime, check out my Q&A with Eric Richmond.

 

brooklyn spaces: What’s it like being the caretaker of such an immense old space?
Eric: We got involved with the property in 1994, and we’re just constantly working on fixing it up. We’ll fix something, have some events and shows to generate more revenue, then fix something else, then have more events and shows, like that. Most of the basics are done by now, but there’s always more work to be done.

Holiday Craft Market, pic from Markets of New York

brooklyn spaces: What was the area like when you got here?
Eric: This wasn’t a good area, not even close. There were gang members on the stoop, people getting shot in the subway. When we first started working on the building, we went out into the neighborhood and talked to as many of the older residents as we could, to try to get them excited about what we were doing. By and large, the response was, “It’s a beautiful building, but I want nothing to do with it.” There had been such bad things happening on this block for four or five decades that everyone would avoid it. I heard from one woman that some kids had died in the building; they cut a hole in the fence of the balcony and dove in the pool, which was only about two feet deep at that end.

pic from Cabalaza

brooklyn spaces: So what did you have to do to get the older people to start coming here?
Eric: Oh, I never got them. I made the effort, but it never worked. But then things started changing in the neighborhood anyway. In 1998, a bunch of kids across the street tried to build a bomb and blow up Atlantic Terminal. It hit the news big-time, the Feds swooped in, and the city started making a serious effort to clean up the neighborhood. There were drug busts two or three times a week for about six months. A retired policemen once told me that the area around Union St and 5th Ave had one of the highest concentrations of crack dealers in the city. So they had to root out that kind of stuff.

at Oxheart's Canvas, pic by Carlos Henriquez

brooklyn spaces: Wow. 1998 wasn’t that long ago.
Eric: Right. So all I did was hang on long enough, you know? I mean, I cleaned up the best I could in the meantime, but for a long time, 4th Ave was just a dumping ground for everything. There were times when car doors would get thrown over our fence, bumpers, giant piles of concrete rubble, even a wardrobe. One time, about two dozen huge red plastic letters showed up inside our fence. So I played Scrabble with them, and what did it spell? Associated Supermarket. I walked up the block, went into the store, and said, “You guys just dumped your old shit in my yard. Come deal with it.” They said, “We didn’t dump it!” I had to lay out the letters and show them.

hoop meditation class

brooklyn spaces: So are you seeing positive effects of the huge influx of new people in the neighborhood? Are you getting more foot traffic?
Eric: It’s hard to tell because the café is on hiatus. Now there are six places around here where you can get a great cup of espresso, so we have to figure something else out. We’re going to be opening a fairly large coworking space in a couple of months, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes.

from Oxheart's Canvas, pic by Nicole de Waal

brooklyn spaces: Do you have some favorite events or performances that have happened here?
Eric: We had a rock musical early on that was really tremendous, it was based on David Bowie. About a decade ago we had a Broadway dancer choreograph the musical On the Town with songs about New York. That was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. A year or so ago we had a Rocky: The Musical workshop here; they took over the whole space, built a ring, did all their rehearsals and some performances, and then went off to Germany to perform there. There have been some amazing music acts, too: Fiona Apple, Yo La Tengo, stuff like that.

Civilians theater company, pic by Adrian Kinloch

brooklyn spaces: Are there some lessons you’ve learned from doing this for so long?
Eric: Lately we’ve been thinking a lot about what we’re trying to accomplish, and working toward being more intentional. It’s important to make the events conform to the building, instead of trying to force the building to conform to the events.

from Oxheart's Canvas, pic by Ralph Andre

brooklyn spaces: So are there particular things you’d like to have more of?
Eric: We’ll probably be reloading the music and performance end of what we do. I mean, I love music, I love bands, but loud band just don’t work here. When a DJ comes in, you can tell him all you want about sound level limits, but he won’t pay any attention. People always say “Why can’t it be louder?” Well, because you’re not in a club in Chelsea. I don’t have eighteen-inch brick walls, we’re not in an abandoned warehouse, you’re not going to piss off my neighbors. That limits some of the higher-profile events, but that’s fine. We’re not trying to get Jay-Z to come play here; I’d rather have more Bar Mitzvahs.

Juste Debout dance contest

brooklyn spaces: Are there other things you want to talk about about your experiences here? You’ve been doing this a long time; you’re part of old-guard Brooklyn.
Eric: That’s a sad thought, but probably true. The only thing I can say is that Brooklyn’s changing. It’s changing like wildfire, and it’s good to see.
brooklyn spaces: It’s nice to hear that. When I talk to people in Williamsburg or even Bushwick, the feeling is, “It kind of sucks; we’re about to get priced out.”
Eric: Well the problem is, they didn’t buy. People who are in a space temporarily don’t tend to think about being part of the infrastructure. They have an itinerant arts ethos and style that has to up and move all the time. You’re going to see them in Brownsville next, and then East New York, and then Ocean Hill.

upper floor of the Lyceum being used as a gym

brooklyn spaces: Yeah, and then Detroit. Because we’re running out of places to go.
Eric: Well, it’ll take a long time. I go to Williamsburg and see all the people there, all the development, it’s unbelievable. I remember getting held up a couple times in Williamsburg; now it’s got athletic facilities and tens of thousands of people milling about every weekend. I think it’s a good thing. When I go to Bed-Stuy and see Dough, the best doughnut place in the city, right next to the projects, how is that wrong?

Face the Music, pic by Kaufman Center

***

Like this? Read about more historic buildings: Brooklyn Historical Society, Bushwick Schoolhouse, Breuckelen Distilling Co., Broken Angel, South Oxford Space, Trinity Project

silent barn redux

oriana on 17 Jul ’13

neighborhood: ridgewood | space type: music, art, events | active since: 2013 | links: website, facebook, twitter

By now everyone probably knows the storied history of the Silent Barn. The band Skeletons started the DIY venue in their Ridgewood apartment in 2005 (which I profiled back in 2009), and until 2011 it was a raucous, dingy, rollicking good time—and then they got ransacked. Around $15k worth of equipment was destroyed, and then the city came in and evicted them. That probably should have been that, but the Silent Barn launched a Kickstarter, which brought in more than $40k. So they decided to start over, but this time, to be as legit and legal as they could be.

the Husk; photo from Showpaper

Fast forward to early 2013, and the Silent Barn 2.0 opened its doors in Bushwick. The new incarnation is definitely a continuation of the Husk (which the original space is now called), on a much bigger scale. The building itself is a lot lager—three floors and a yard, with eight bedrooms, thirteen roommates, three stages (or more, as needed), an art gallery, a dozen art and recording studios, and on and on. The scope is bigger too; in addition to music shows nearly every night, there’s the Babycastles videogame collective, science art, Aftermath Supplies artist reuse shop, multimedia video art events, a supper club, piñatas, theatre groups, and a whole lot more. And the community involvement this time around is huge: there are about 150 people participating, in various degrees, in the conceptualizing and running of the space. Administration is framed on the metaphor of a kitchen, and there are about 60 Chefs, each responsible for keeping a small aspect of the Barn going. It’s all volunteer, all consensus, and all making it up as they go along. It is, I think, pioneering a new way to do DIY—intentional, flexible, transparent, and innovative. (Want to join in the fun? Go here.)

Here’s a short Q&A with Katie, the Press Chef, and below that I asked two questions of a dozen different Barn members: 1) What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here, and 2) Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

brooklyn spaces: From the structure of the collective to the special vocabulary to all these working groups—did that evolve spontaneously as you figured it out, or was there a model you were working from?
Katie: We’re making it up as we go. We have weekly Kitchen meetings with all the Chefs, and part of that is Stew, which is all our discussion topics, whether it’s what murals are coming up or how to deal with conflict resolution; everything goes in the Stew and we work it out together.

all pix by Alix Piorun unless noted

brooklyn spaces: I love that. I feel like this space is really breaking new ground in a lot of ways, sort of changing the meaning of DIY in Brooklyn.
Katie: Well, there’s a responsibility here. Places come and go, you know? When the Husk was ransacked, we had such a huge reaction from the community, so it was our responsibility to do things the right way. After the Kickstarter, we could have re-opened the next day—and then probably gotten shut down again. So we decided to focus on longevity. I think we’re really on the right path. People always try to define DIY; we’re still doing it ourselves, we’re just doing it differently. It’s not like we’re trying to change the model for other spaces; this is just what we have to do. Plus look at this! This place rules! This never would have happened if we hadn’t taken the route we took.

Martha Moszczynski’s painting and piñata studio

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on the neighborhood? What’s it like being in Bushwick now, especially after having been in Ridgewood?
Katie: We’re really trying to make ourselves an asset to the neighborhood. We go to community board meetings every month. We want people to know us and recognize us, to know that they can come to a show or book a show or play a show or put up some art. We really want to find new ways to integrate with the community and make our presence a positive thing.

***

brooklyn spaces: What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here?

Katie: I like the ones that seem to be holistic Barn, like when there’s a house show and a complimentary show downstairs. Like the Modular Equinox, which took place in every single room. It was really neat to have that kind of foot traffic everywhere, even in the “private” areas.

Tricia: Lani’s birthday party. We had been holding our breath waiting for a liquor license for so long, and I think that was the first show where we’d really come into our own. It was this giant wild night, everyone went crazy, just the whole Barn partying.

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): This question never gets easier. I’ve seen / thrown / taken part in easily over a thousand shows at Silent Barn! My favorites are those that come out the blue from old friends, the ones that have strange challenges, the ones with moments that feel like magic, the ones that somehow discover a new way to use a place that thousands of bands have been playing with for years.

zine library

Mila (website): I trust that if I show up on any given night, I will see something intriguing. One evening that stands out is the Public Meeting we had in May,“Women in DIY.” It was amazing to see the room filled with women who have done really extraordinary things. It felt supportive and positive, inspiring and motivating, to be a participant in this community.

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): The Wild Boys Immersive Party, which had performances, dream machine, food, piñata, art, community costumes, etc.

another living room; sometimes transforms into the Hawkitori Dinner Club

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): No offense to the events (and I’ll give another shoutout to that Modular Solstice night when there were three completely different events going on simultaneously), but it’s the times in between the events and the things that happen because events are going on that I most remember.

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): My favorite events are the ones I don’t show up for on purpose. I’ll be working in the shop or my studio and there will just be someone singing their heart out or the most nasty thrash band totally destroying. I stumble into the show room with total awe and appreciation of what’s going on and that I happen to be there to witness it.

Deep Cuts (barber shop + record shop)

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): On the one hand, I really love the Modular Synthesizer Solstice and Equinox shows I curate here, because I always include so many individuals who are part of the community and have such crazy visions about weird electronics. On the other hand, I really love our weekly administration meetings because it’s crazy how much we get done for a group with no traditional top-down hierarchy. Both “events” speak to the possibility of surprise still existing in such a dead, predictable, monotonous society.

***

brooklyn spaces: Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

Brandon: I used to do house shows in Michigan, and the intimacy and humanity of that scale of cultural happenings was really important. When I moved to New York I was so depressed, going to all these crappy clubs where they tally at the door how many people paid for your band. It just sucked. And then I found the old Barn and it was so different. It’s a way to exist in New York and interact with other people on a much more human level.

Gravesend Recordings / Future 86 Recording Studio

Katie: I think that’s what a lot of our answers are, actually. I’m from a small town in Mississippi, where there aren’t any clubs or bars or anything, so it’s only DIY stuff, jamming with your friends, playing in someone’s basement or on the beach or whatever. And I was so depressed when I moved to New York too; I got stuck in this dorm with these people I didn’t get, and the Husk was the first place I felt at home. It’s home and family, that’s why we do it.

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): I love working toward the future of Silent Barn along with all these other pretty incredible people who all have such different talents and viewpoints, knowing that I might never had the change to even meet them otherwise.

backyard during Warper blockparty

Tricia: I’m here because I can be. I can’t think of anywhere else that would say, “Hey neuroscientist, come have a space!” Not only can I learn about art and music and DIY culture, but I can collaborate with artists. It’s just amazing to do science and art in the same space. And to show it to people who want to see it!

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): Being here lets us work with a bunch of people who are good at things we’re not good at. For a recent show, Martha made a huge dick piñata for us. It would have taken me ages to figure out how to make a dick piñata! There’s so many skillsets here. You can just email the Kitchen saying, “I need this weird thing. Does anyone have it or can anyone do it?” and you get three emails back saying, “I can do that!”

another living room; paintings by Devin Lily, photography by Nina Mashurova

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): The constant friction and motion of interacting with people, art, life, and general day-to-day bullshit, like emptying trash cans or drinking coffee and sharing “that time I puked” stories over a taco. Navigating a place that is a whole made up of parts, and all the interesting drama that brings about, while ultimately having a community of people who’ve got your back. A second place to call home, to take creative refuge in.

One the living rooms; art by Lena Hawkins, Lani Combier-Kapel, Jen May

Lani (Volunteer Chef): It’s easy to get wrapped in bar culture here, or to just go to a show and leave to go home, fall asleep, and go to your 9–5 job. That’s not the life I’m interested in; I want to be immersed in the art and music that happens here. Being involved in Silent Barn satisfies a part of my personality that helps me grow as an artist and musician.

Eli (Art Chef): Silent Barn is an excellent experiment in joining art, life, and politics. We’ve managed to corral so many brilliant people and force their conflicts and concordances into creating something with the potential to be truly new and exciting.

Nina (hosts Phresh Cutz): It’s this great community environment that really supports experimental ideas or any kind of creative thing. My whole life, the events I’ve really enjoyed and been inspired by have been in community-based creative art spaces like this, so it’s really great to support that and help facilitate it by giving people space to do what they want to do.

Phresh Cutz, photo by Meghan O’Byrne

Kunal (Babycastles): The thing that’s important is the promise of this strange experiment actually producing something of immense value to the world. Once we get all the pieces solidly in place, a massively successful mechanism of including participation from almost anyone interested, a successful “community-building” pathway for any new voice interested in gathering and growing any piece of culture inside of a stew of culture, successfully extending the value of all this community, strengthening the celebration to our direct neighbors and thereby to the city as a whole as a truly exhaustively functioning projection of the social ecosystem that the world should be, the potential for the thing to be so strong that it continues to channel and nurture and organize new voices in art and communication almost entirely, and finally, some sort of flowering and seeding aspect, where the energy is too much for the small space, and the vision encompassed inside starts to blow up, fly with the wind to surrounding areas, and just take over life in the city itself, and the ideas propagate strongly and successfully. Stuff like that.

Hieroglyph Thesaurus performing

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): Silent Barn acts as an artistically inclined autonomous zone, where we get to make the rules and share the work we want and are excited by. I don’t think it’s too different than the DIY ethos of other collective art spaces in Brooklyn and around the world throughout history, but I happen to live here and want to be able to participate directly in the culture I consume, and this is as solidly sustainable a way to do so, on my own terms, that I’ve found in New York.

Mila: The Barn is a place where my ideas about what I can and can’t do are constantly challenged. I am constantly forced to reexamine how I think and how I do things, because infinitely more is possible, permissible, and at stake. Plus it feels like family.

Title:Point theatre company’s desk/workspace.

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): I participate in the Silent Barn because it’s giving vitality and substance and life to the concept of constructing our own world—a concept that I find hyper-American but strangely near extinct in this country today. I love experiencing the art and ideas that all these diverse individuals create and, in a broader sense, I love helping to create the space that makes that human freedom possible.

***

Like this? Read about more collectives: Flux Factory, Monster Island, the Schoolhouse, Hive, Bushwick Project for the Arts

gemini & scorpio loft

oriana on 20 May ’13

neighborhood: gowanus | space type: art & events | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter, flickr

G&S Glitter Ball, NYE 2013 (photo by Linus Gelber)

For ten years, Gemini & Scorpio have been throwing huge, immersive themed parties, consistently positioning themselves at the forefront of the NYC underground art-party world. Along with a few other beautifully creative affairs—Rubulad, Dances of Vice, Shanghai Mermaid, Cheryl, various Winkel + Balktick shindigs—Gemini & Scorpio curate the most creative, daring, and over-the-top events that Brooklyn has to offer. Whether it’s jazz bands in a Russian banya, a steampunk Burning Man fundraiser, an old-meets-new electro-swing dance party at Lincoln Center, or a New Year’s Eve glitter explosion, Gemini & Scorpio bring together dancers, music, and performers around lavish themes to create unforgettable occasions, party after party after party. And that’s not all: G&S also curate a weekly events listing that is second only to NonsenseNYC for finding the most fantastic things to do any day of the week. Sign up here!

After years of being nomadic, Miss Scorpio found a permanent home for G&S in a repurposed Gowanus woodshop. Now, in addition to lavish monthly parties, the loft hosts lectures, dance classes, plays, photo and video shoots, and more. And after spending months on demolition and build-out of the new space, Miss Scorpio reached out to the community she has provided with so many fantastic experiences to ask for help with the next stage of development of her space—and successfully raised more than $32k through Kickstarter. In the short term, this will mean new floors, walls, and ceiling for the loft, and in the long term it will allow G&S to keep bringing us all the best, most magical affairs—the uniquely beautiful experiences that make Brooklyn the most spectacular place to be.

photos by Maximus Comissar unless noted

brooklyn spaces: Let’s start before this space: tell me how you became one of New York’s most creative party mavens.

Miss Scorpio, photo by Linus Gelber

Miss Scorpio: It was a pure accident that started with a website about online dating. This was ten years ago, when online dating was mostly considered weird and sad, but Miss Gemini and I wanted to show people that it was actually this fabulous thing, like eBay for dating. We thought you should never just do dinner and a movie with your online date; you should do something interesting, so that even if the date sucked, at least you’d have had a cool night. So every Friday we put out a list of unique things to do with your online date, and then we started throwing “singles parties that don’t suck.” Well, they didn’t suck to such a degree that we couldn’t keep couples out! We started with a Valentine’s Day party, then we did one for Halloween, and another one for New Year’s, and now it’s ten years later and this is all I do.

brooklyn spaces: What elements are necessary to make a Gemini & Scorpio party?
Miss Scorpio: First there has to be a theme, something a bit off-beat and unexpected that gives people an excuse to dress up. Live entertainment is another factor that’s really important: there’s generally a whole evening of programming curated to the theme. A G&S party isn’t one you drop into casually on your way to something else; our ideal party guest is one who leaves the house knowing that they’re coming to see us, dresses to the theme, and stays with us for the whole night.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite parties.

banya party, photo from G&S

Miss Scorpio: I always enjoy the Lost Circus steampunk party, and also the banya parties, which we’ve been doing since 2006. A fantastic recent party was a sci-fi mashup called Cantina at the End of the Universe. It was a Star Wars Day party—I’ve been wanting to do that party for four years, but I had to wait until May 4th fell on a Saturday. One of the headliners was Big Nazo, this incredible alien monster funk band. They played the Masquerade Macabre Halloween party that I co-produced with Rubulad in 2010, which had one of my favorite moments of any party I’ve ever done. Big Nazo was onstage being joined by the five-piece Raya Brass Band, and I was leading a parade from our other party location, headed up by Extraordinary Rendition, a fifteen-person brass band. Big Nazo and Raya were supposed to be done when we got there but they weren’t, so we had like thirty people onstage jamming, along with these enormous alien monster puppets, and the crowd just lost their shit. It was beautiful. [Video of the madness here.]

Big Nazo, photo from G&S

brooklyn spaces: Who are some other favorite performers you’ve worked with?
Miss Scorpio: There’s definitely a family of performers that I book again and again. Sxip Shirey is an absolute genius composer and musician, and every time he plays I’m excited to hear it, especially when he performs with the incredible beat-boxer Adam Matta. The Love Show dancers are wonderful, they combine classical dance training with a cabaret attitude and fantastic costumes. Shayfer James is a terrific dark rock musician who deserves a much bigger audience than he’s getting. Sometimes I take on artists as a personal cause, and keep booking them until people realize how incredible they are.

G&S piano

brooklyn spaces: Have you ever had someone get so big that they outgrow your parties?
Miss Scorpio: Yes! After I booked the Hot Sardines for my Lincoln Center Midsummer Night’s Swing two years ago, their career has exploded and they are now booked constantly. That’s happened with a bunch of circus people I used to book as well. But it’s a good problem to have. I’m very proud of my talented friends.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, let’s talk about this space. How long did you spend looking for it, and what shape was it in when you found it?
Miss Scorpio: Four years of constant searching, and in the end it was a random Craigslist find. The moment I walked in, I knew this was it, even though it was completely wrecked. There was plywood over all the windows, the floor was rotted in multiple places, there were strange pipes everywhere, the ceiling was half rotted out, there were signs of a recent fire. It was terrible.

a few months after move-in

brooklyn spaces: How long did it take you to get it into shape?
Miss Scorpio: First there were two months of just demolition. Everything you see, all the walls, we did it all. We re-laid much of the floor, using wood repurposed from other parts of the space. Once we got bathrooms up—with walls—I knew I was ready to let people in. The first party we did here was Swing House, one of my 1920s remix parties. Everybody loved it, but it was a party in a construction zone.

fixing the rotted floors

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the non-party events you’ve had here.
Miss Scorpio: We’ve hosted a few lectures in conjunction with Observatory that have been great fun. We had one called “How to Trespass” with Wanderlust Projects, and another with my boyfriend, lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, called “Sex in Dictionaries.” We just had a storytelling event, “I’m Tawkin’ Here,” which was all New Yorkers and New York stories. Brooklyn Swings does a weekly swing-dancing class. We hosted an immersive, participatory version of Midsummer Night’s Dream staged by Shakespeare Shakedown. I’m always looking for people who are doing innovative, interesting things and could benefit from having access to an affordable art space.

Meet Me in Paris Cabaret, photo by Binnorie Artwork

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship like within the rest of the underground arts community? I feel like, of everyone I’ve interviewed, you really know every single person in the creative class in Brooklyn.
Miss Scorpio: It’s an extremely tight-knit community. It’s not just me; I think we all know each other. But because I do the event listings, I have a good sense of what everyone is up to. Even if I don’t know someone personally, I can tell you what arc their work has taken over the last ten years.

G&S rooftop view

brooklyn spaces: Last year when you and I were doing Occupy Sandy volunteering together, you told me you once did the listings on your phone from Paris.
Miss Scorpio: Oh yeah. Another time I did them from a tethered connection in an RV on the way to Burning Man. Everywhere I’ve traveled, I’ve brought the listings with me. I consider it my community service, a way for me to give back to the people who trust me and honor me with their presence at my events.

 

 

G&S rooftop art

brooklyn spaces: What advice would you give someone who wanted to do what you do?
Miss Scorpio: I’d say definitely don’t get into it for the glamour! Ninety percent of what I do is spreadsheets and emails. Maybe by 11 or 12 on a party night I’ll finally get to get into costume and have a few hours of fun, but for the most part it’s a job like any other. For me the payoff is conceiving something and then seeing it become a reality.

brooklyn spaces: What are your plans for the future—ten more years of this?
Miss Scorpio: Oh gosh, I don’t know. It does seem like I’m pretty committed to the New York cultural underground, but I couldn’t tell you what will happen in my life in the next ten years. I hope it’s big and exciting.

***

Like this? Read about more underground nightlife: Rubulad, the Lab, Red Lotus Room, Newsonic, House of Yes, Gowanus Ballroom, 12-turn-13

dead herring

oriana on 23 Jan ’13

space type: apartment & music | neighborhood: williamsburg | active: 2007–2013 | links: myspace, facebook, twitter

For most of its run, Dead Herring—an apartment that sometimes doubled as a DIY music and occasional theatre space was fairly averse to any sort of press. That’s just part of the fun of running an underground apartment venue—some measure of paranoia is often called for. But Dead Herring closed Feb 1st, 2013, right after an amazing commemorative closing show, featuring the Immaculates (a band that was formed at a Dead Herring party), Moonmen on the Moon, Man (who broke up and then reunited just for this show), Necking!! (one of the Dead Herring creators’ band), and special secret guests.

Cuddle Machines, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Read my interview with housemates Liz, Nicki, Jeff, and Andrew, which took place on the eve of the end of Dead Herring, below. For more pix from Nicki, there’s a terrific six-year DH photo retrospective at Impose Magazine. And be sure to check out their new space in North Williamsburg, Cloud City!

show posters, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a quick history of how this all got started.
Jeff: Liz and I went to college together in California, and we both lived in this co-op called Cloyne Court Hotel in Berkeley that used to have shows in the kitchen, in the basement, wherever. The first time I went there Nerf Herder was playing, and I was like, “Whoa, this place is awesome! I’m moving in here next year!”
Nicki: My band played there once, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. There were kegs in the quad, there was a room no one could go into, there was the most disgusting bathroom I’d ever seen in my life, it was covered in graffiti, and just everyone going crazy and hanging off pipes. It was so cool.
Jeff: And then years later I wound up living across the hall from Liz and Nick in the McKibben Lofts.
Liz: Nick and I are the ones who started Dead Herring. We had a couple of shows at McKibben, and when we heard about this space, we thought it would be great place to continue to do that. Nicki moved in six months later, and Jeff moved in in 2008, and Andrew moved in two years ago, in 2010.

Bare Wires, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What was the first show?
Nicki: It was Maneguar, Pterodactyl, Golden Error, Marvel & Knievel, and Nonhorse.

brooklyn spaces: Do you all book shows?
Liz: I don’t. Nicki books all the music now, Jeff does the variety shows, and Andrew has brought some plays in.
brooklyn spaces: Nicki, is there a succinct way to characterize what kind of music you book here?
Nicki: No, not really. We used to have a lot more experimental noise shows when Nick lived here, because he was into experimental noise music and he booked that. I’m more into punk and rock and indie pop. I don’t know, it just depends on what comes together. If there’s a band coming through that we know, we’ll book around them. Or if we see a band we really like we’ll tell them to come play here. It used to be easier for bands to find us when we used the MySpace page, but that just became too much, we were getting like fifteen emails a day. None of us is a full-time booker, you know? When I have ten minutes I’ll IM people, like, “Hey, you want to play a show?”

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me either the coolest or weirdest thing about living in a place where there are shows.
Nicki: A funny thing is that people don’t realize that we live here. People come here for shows and then they’ll come over for a potluck and be like, “Oh, wow, it looks so different. I didn’t know you had a couch.”
brooklyn spaces: I think that’s part of the charm of these spaces, that you know while you’re watching this band you’re sitting on the roof of someone’s closet or washing your hands in their kitchen sink.
Jeff: Did you read the article about the new Silent Barn in the Village Voice? They were saying how most DIY spaces are illegal, like no one can talk about it, which has kind of been our thing. But now the Silent Barn is like “No, this is completely legal.” They’re going to get a liquor license and whatever. One of our old roommates, Joe, who’s part of Showpaper, he lives there now.
Andrew: I had a lot of conversations with Joe when he lived here about this whole thing, about how all these spaces are somewhere along a continuum, like how much are they a house, and how much are they a venue? Silent Barn has always been basically a venue, even though people live there. We’re really a house that has shows once in a while.

Golden Error, photo by Nicki Ishmael

Nicki: We have to tell people all the time that they can’t have their birthday party here, or their mud-wrestling party. We’ve gotten a lot of weird requests over the years. But overall it’s fantastic, this house pretty much made my life in New York. I met all these people, I found something to do and a community to be in. I had no idea there was a music scene that was this small and this amazing here. You have these moments where you realize this is happening in your life and you created it and you’re a part of it. It makes me so happy. It’s so great when you have a whole bunch of bands come in at the beginning of the night, you’ve never met any of them before, and at the end of the night they’re all giving you giant hugs and saying this was the best show they’ve ever played. It’s so amazing that we had the opportunity to do this.
Jeff: People really appreciate us just trying to make an awesome, fun night, and when everybody’s stoked on it, it’s a good feeling. It’s great when really talented, amazing people have a great time performing here.
Andrew: We just had a theatre show that did a three-night run, and It was like we were living in this little theatre that everyone was a part of. I don’t know if you could achieve that in any other setting.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you think that being in Williamsburg has affected the space?
Nicki: I really like that Death By Audio is so close, and 285 Kent, and Glasslands. It’s nice that there are still a few really good spaces around here. And I feel like living off the L and the J is convenient, a lot of people can come out to shows here. I don’t always want to go all the way to Bushwick, but people seem happy to come all the way out here, which is awesome. Jeff’s shows get put up on the Nonsense NYC list sometimes, and people come here from wherever because they’re like “Oh, I know where that is, I can get there.”
Andrew: For a performing arts venue it really makes a difference if it’s in a part of town that people want to go to.

Teenage Nightwar, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: And it’s nice to see that there are still places like this in Williamsburg. A lot of people think that all the creativity is gone from this neighborhood, but that’s not true. It’s just a little harder to find. Anyway, tell me about some of your favorite shows.
Nicki: My favorite “I can’t believe I actually pulled this together” show was when Forgetters played here, Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker’s band. So many people I know have loved his music since we were like sixteen years old, and he played in my living room! And we had this band called Leg Sweeper come, they played with our friends’ band Sleepies, and they were so excited about playing here, and we were so excited about having them play, and after the show we all hung out until 5 in the morning, and everybody slept over, and we made waffles in the morning, and it was magical. Or another one, after The Men played, we had a limbo contest with the guys in the band, which was so ridiculous and fun. I think the craziest show we ever had here was Calvin Johnson and Chain and the Gang. When I introduced Chain and the Gang, everyone just freaked the fuck out.
Liz: That show was my teenage dream come true. I was so thrilled, I couldn’t believe he was in our house. He got here early, and we were trying to set up, and our old cat was sitting on the bar, and he sang a song to the cat! It killed me. My other favorite moment was when Social Studies, our friends’ band from San Francisco, played last year. Right before they started to play my favorite song, someone cut in and said, “We just found out the Giants are going to the World Series.” The whole crowd was full of people from California, and everyone was so so so excited.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Andrew: I’m from Minneapolis, so when our friends’ theatre group came from Minneapolis to do their play, it was really exciting for me to get to share this space with them. They used to live in a space like this in Minneapolis, and one of them had a space like this in Baltimore before that where my theatre troupe performed, so being able to return the favor was really gratifying.
Jeff: I like all the variety shows, I guess. Oh and Reggie Watts, that was awesome. And Corn Mo.
Nicki: And the ventriloquist! And the magician who sawed a woman in half! And the guy from Cirque de Soliel who took all his clothes off and climbed all over the entire audience! And the lady who juggled with her feet! I know it sounds like we’re making this stuff up, but we’re not.
Jeff: Yeah, we’ve had some crazy stuff.

Hunters, photo by Nicki Ishmael

brooklyn spaces: What advice do would you give to other people who want to do something like this?
Nicki: Be nice. That’s something we try really hard to do. Now we’re friends with all the bands and performers and other DIY spaces in the city. That’s why we’re not super nervous about going into the new space. We feel like we’re not going to be alone, because all these other people are going to support us. All the DIY spaces are kind of in it together.
Jeff: Yeah, it sounds cheesy but we really feel like we’re part of a community. And we’re good at welcoming people in and having a positive vibe about everything.
Nicki: That makes it a lot more fun for everyone. We want to have fun too!

***

Like this? Read about more apartment performance spaces: Silent Barn, The Muse, Cave of Archaic Remnants, The Schoolhouse, Greenroom Brooklyn, Newsonic, Jerkhaus

body actualized center

oriana on 26 Oct ’12

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: community space, yoga studio | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Body Actualized Center for Cosmic Living is a new space in Bushwick that has quickly gained a lot of acclaim. A former iron foundry (and before that, briefly, a chicken slaughterhouse!), Body Actualized is now a beautiful, welcoming space with reclaimed-wood floors, a wall of windows, candles and incense, and cushions stacked along the walls. By day it’s a yoga studio offering hatha, vinyasa, and prana yoga, as well as rejuvenation classes, qi-yo workshops, new moon and full moon ceremonies, shamanic astrology, and more. By night it’s a venue for electronic music performances and “chill-out” parties.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Run by a loose collective of musicians, artists, and promoters—several of whom make up Vibes Management—Body Actualized is also known for weekly Cosmic Yoga, which is yoga with live ambient electronic music, and promoting “Healthy Hedonism”: a lifestyle reflected in organic food, community empowerment, consciousness raising, creative opportunities, and spiritual growth. You should obviously sign up for a yoga class, but first read my interview with Brian, one of the founding members.

photo by Angelina Dreem

brooklyn spaces: Did the collective exist before the space, or did the space come first?
brian: Body Actualized has been a group as well as a brand for about three years, since way before we got this space. We throw DJ parties with a cosmic aesthetic, and we did Cosmic Yoga on the roof of the Market Hotel for years. When we found this space we were excited to be able to have our own venue, but slowly it dawned on us that we didn’t want to do just a venue, so we decided to have yoga during the day. The three of us who signed the lease didn’t want to be the only ones doing things, so we called all our friends and said, “Hey guys, we’ve got something really special.” We started having meetings, and whoever kept coming back ended up being part of the founding collective.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Is the collective consensus based?
brian: Yes. Non-hierarchical, consensus based. The one rule is that no one should do anything they don’t want to do, and that way everyone can be happy. We’re more a group of friends with a vision than a business. Having a commitment to radical honesty is really important. Everyone can say whatever they’re feeling, because it’s based in love, and thriving on love comes from mutual understanding.

brooklyn spaces: How do you crystallize the vision or mission of the space?
brian: Right now, it’s not crystallized. We’re just doing what we do. Everyone kind of gets it, but no one can put it into words. We all know what’s appropriate for the space and what falls under the purview of our vibe.

Astral Project Orchestra

brooklyn spaces: Are you guys all into yoga? Are you the yoga teachers?
brian: There are three yoga teachers in the core group, but everyone is into yoga as a way of life. I mean, it’s not some sort of didactic thing; there’s no rules. If someone doesn’t like yoga for a little while, that’s okay; yoga is just a small facet of a larger vibe and intention, just one core element in galvanizing the overall energy of what we’re doing in the larger picture.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the events.
brian: They’re mostly centered around electronic music. There’s very few guitars; I think there’s only twice been a drum set used in the space. The music plays a huge part in determining the aesthetic of an environment. There’s a whole range of styles within electronic music, and we curate them specifically to hone in on a certain vibe, just like someone would curate an art show. Everything is working on a very subtle level to open the space, to open the pathways for someone’s mind to travel to a different region.

Shawn Devlin O’Sullivan

brooklyn spaces: When I came to my first show here and there were all the cushions on the floor, it was very affecting. It really changes the way you interact with and experience the space.
brian: Yeah, it’s important for them to be “chill-out” parties, because people will feel free. If someone comes here alone, they can still be comfortable, whereas when you go to a bar or a warehouse party, it feels and looks weird to be alone. Here, you could be laying down asleep in the corner, and no one would even take a second glance. It’s like positive nightlife. You’re in an environment that’s clean, a clean welcoming wood floor. No chemicals are used to clean the space; it’s sanitary in its own way. And most people take their shoes off when they come in, which changes the mindset of everyone in the room. When you have your shoes off, you let down your guard, you feel more vulnerable, you feel like you’re at home. This space is kind of an oasis, one that’s much needed in this very hard and often distracted, isolating city. There’s a social barrier in most public places that doesn’t really exist here.

brooklyn spaces: It must attract really interesting people.
brian: Yeah, all sorts of people who think about the world in ways they were not taught in high school. We have both artistic and mystic people come through, people who practice reiki or the use of subtle energies, people who are interested in tarot cards, in astrology. It’s not a party atmosphere; it’s a place for people to come together over a different energy.

Future Shock

brooklyn spaces: How do you feel about being in Bushwick right now? Do you have a relationship with some of the other innovative spaces around here?
brian: Bushwick is just paradise right now, I can’t say enough positive things about it. People are really friendly, energy is high, there’s a lot of great stuff popping up. Secret Project Robot is really cool, the new Silent Barn is going to be in Bushwick. Everything is ending up here. And we get a pretty cool racial diversity at Body Actualized, on top of all the other types of diversity. That feels good.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
brian: About fifteen times as many plants, like a beautiful jungle. Ambient, indirect lighting. Permanent installations that make people think differently about the world through technology. Everything about the space has to be something that no one is doing. Every element has to be an original concept. By doing unique things we can open people up to new possibilities.

Iasos performing at Cosmic Yoga

brooklyn spaces: Are there specific artists you’re hoping to bring in?
brian: Oh, yeah. We have like two hundred artists we’d like to have here. We’ve already had some incredible shows. Franco Falsini just played. For one of our first big shows we had Iasos, one of the founders of New Age music, who has never played in New York City before. That set a great tone and precedent for the music community worldwide. So when I email someone, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I know about that place.” I just emailed Maria Minerva, an amazing Estonian artist, and she was like, “Yeah, I know about the Center.” The sky’s the limit. You can do anything in this world.

***

Like this? Read about more community spaces: Trees Not Trash, Time’s Up, Trinity Project, Bushwick City Farm

fort useless

oriana on 30 May ’12

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: music & events | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook, twitter

In a dense (and getting denser!) corner of Bushwick, Fort Useless, a DIY show space housed in what used to be an underground punk venue, is a stone’s throw from the Schoolhouse, Goodbye Blue Monday, the Bobby Redd Project, XPO 929, 6 Charles, and probably a few more I forgot. Although Fort Useless is mostly known for music, they’ve also got a monthly comedy showcase called Spit-Take Fridays, a regular Songwriter Salon, movie nights, dance performances, visual art exhibits, occasional storytelling events, and straight-up parties. It helps that it’s an extremely malleable space, and also that Jeremiah, who runs things, is deeply committed to fostering community, and is happy to turn over the reins to various friends and collaborators who want to put together their own events.

Fort Useless is gearing up for a big weekend during the upcoming Bushwick Open Studios (June 1 through 3), with an art show, a Spit-Take Friday, a live music show, and a Songwriters Salon. Head on over to catch some or all of that, but first read my interview with Jeremiah!

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to do this?
Jeremiah: I’ve been involved with music the whole time I’ve been in New York. I was in a band, Man in Gray, and I got involved with booking shows through that. We didn’t know a lot of other bands, so we tried to coordinate musicians to get to know each other and play shows together, which eventually resulted in us creating StereoactiveNYC. Anyway, we’d played shows at the McKibben Lofts, we’d played shows Todd P produced, and those were some of the funnest shows I’d been involved in. So I wanted to do something like that.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What was the first show here?
Jeremiah: We had Sharon Van Etten and a bunch of people I was friends with: Jared Friedman, Gabriel Miller-Phillips, Kristie Redfield, Manny Nomikos, El Jezel. It was just a slapdash sort of thing, but it ended up being one of my favorite shows I’ve ever done in my life. It was an auspicious start.

Sharon Van Etten, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: How would you characterize the music you have here?
Jeremiah: The space sort of dictates that we can’t have a certain type of music, because we’re in a mixed-use building with residences above us, and I try to be as respectful as possible. There’s definitely a loose-knit community of bands that are regulars here, and the great thing about them is that it’s about musicality, the skill of writing songs and performing them. The bands are more about the music than about the scene. But I guess everyone thinks that.

Gunfight!, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the other events you have here.
Jeremiah: We have a monthly comedy show called Spit-Take Friday, which is put together by George Flannagan of El Jezel. It’s been really successful. A lot of comics have said they love doing it because there’s always a crowd here that’s here to laugh.

George Flanagan at Spit-Take Friday, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: What else?
Jeremiah: There’s our Songwriters Salon, done by my friend Jared. We have ten or twelve people play three songs each, generally one new song, one old song, and one cover. We encourage performers to talk to the audience in between songs and get feedback. It’s a salon in the old sense of the word, where people are sharing and communicating. One person called it “Songwriters Anonymous.”

Songwriter Salon, photo by Maryanne Ventrice

brooklyn spaces: And visual art, right?
Jeremiah: That’s the newest thing for me. Because comedy, as different as it is from music, there’s sort of a basic similarity. You’ve got to book something, you have to have a schedule, you have to have some sort of organized thing for a night to flow. But art? The way an art exhibit is organized is so backward to me, based on my years spent dealing with musicians.

"120 dB," photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: Do you curate the shows yourself?
Jeremiah: I try not to, although I’m about to do my second one. The first one I did was for BOS 2010. It didn’t have a theme, I just wanted to have whatever we could get, get as many people involved, showcase as much work as possible. It was cool and people like it, but it really taught me how not to do a show. The one I’m doing for the upcoming BOS is much simpler. It’s called “XNY,” and it features two artists, Daina Higgins and Bryan Bruchman, who were longtime residents of New York and both moved away to different cities. Daina does photrealistic paintings of urban landscapes, and Bryan is a photographer. I have this idea that once you look at a city like New York, you look at other cities the same way, so I wanted to have their work displayed together and see what that looks like.
brooklyn spaces: That sounds like an awesome idea for a show.
Jeremiah: I hope so. I have a real love for BOS because it’s sort of why I ended up in Bushwick. I’d been to a lot of things out here, but spread out over a long period of time, so I hadn’t really thought of it as a neighborhood. But then I went to a friend’s band playing a showcase during BOS and wandered around the neighborhood, and it made me see Bushwick in a new way.

"120 dB," photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How’d you pick the name?
Jeremiah: My friends’ band, Unsacred Hearts, has an album called “In Defense of Fort Useless.” I love their band, I love that album, and I love that name.
brooklyn spaces: Is it a commentary on how you’re doing something incredibly useful in the neighborhood?
Jeremiah: I mean, I knew that was there, but it’s not why I picked it.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite shows that have happened here?
Jeremiah: Well, like I said, the very first one was incredible. The Mardi Gras and BOS shows are our biggest. One that I really loved, last spring I had a bunch of friends who had been in amazing bands and were each starting new projects, and we had four of them here—Weird Children, nightfalls, Passenger Peru, and Clouder—all playing their very first show in this new incarnation. It was the most packed this place had ever been, and it really drove home to me that this is such a strong community. And the bands all sounded amazing.

Weird Children, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Jeremiah: This may sound cheesy, but Fort Useless is really not about the space we’re in, it’s about who’s doing it. And I’m not sure how much longer we can stay in this space and continue to grow. We’re in no rush to get out of here, but if we find the right thing that we can transition into, that would be amazing. I’d like to be able to vary the kinds of shows we do. Jess Flanagan has curated two dance shows, and they’ve been great, but I would like to have a space where she can put on the show she wants to put on, instead of having to scale it down to fit this space. Also, we were en route to becoming a not-for-profit, but plans kind of stalled. We’re hoping to get that going again.

***

Like this? Read about more music and event spaces: 285 Kent, Vaudeville Park, Gowanus Ballroom, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Shea Stadium, Bushwick Project for the Arts

vaudeville park

oriana on 25 Mar ’12

space type: art & music venue | neighborhood: williamsburg | active: 2008–2013 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Vaudeville Park is a plucky arts venue with wildly diverse programming. It sits right on the borderline (at least, the current one) between Williamsburg and Bushwick. Run by experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Colletti, Vaudeville Park has shows nearly ever night, including all kinds of music (from synth to neo-chamber to ladies of experimental music), literature, film (from Noir Night to avant garde), dance and performance art, gallery shows, comedy, discussions, workshops (from yoga to circuit bending), and more. The space has been active for almost four years, and is now starting to get a lot of attention from the media, including regular mentions from the likes of Time Out New York, Brookly Vegan, Artcat, and Rhizome. Ian is one insanely busy guy who is also incredibly passionate and enthusiastic about the work he does. Check out my interview with him, and then please, go see something amazing at Vaudeville Park!

Ian Colletti, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: How did you get started with all this?
Ian: I’m from New York, born and raised, and I’ve been an artist and a musician pretty much my whole life. It felt like the early 2000s were a dark time for counterculture in Williamsburg. I mean, there was a lot of cool stuff going on for artists, but that was when groups like the Strokes and Interpol and Ambulance LTD, and really high-fashionisa galleries were huge. It was an appropriation of mainstream, cookie-cutter ideals into counterculture. It was like everyone who was in a band really just wanted to be a model in a Levi’s ad. Now artists have a chance to really represent themselves through their own savvy with the internet, but at that point there were just a few labels and magazines that promoted musicians. I was living with this guy from Fader magazine, and he was like, “Man, if you want to start your own weird art collective, you have to kiss these people’s asses.” I was like, No way. I just didn’t want to be part of this phony, arrogant, silver-spoon kind of thing. But I was really worried about the culture here, so in 2007 I stopped playing shows and performing, saved up as much money as I could, and turned my recording studio into an arts venue. The first show we had was Dreamtigers, by Brian Zegeer, who’s one of my best friends. He just headlined the Queens Museum “International 2012,” along with two of my other good friends, Ben Lee and Rachel Mason, both of whom have been really involved here. There’s an extreme synergy here that’s really important.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Was it a nonprofit from the start?
Ian: Well, it was always nonprofit in its mission. We’re sponsored by New York Foundation for the Arts now; they picked Showpaper two years ago and they picked us last year. NYFA is good people, but we need our own 501(c)3, which we just went for, and we need to get larger grants.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How do you pick your programming? Are you the only one who directs it?
Ian: Yes. Basically the mission of Vaudeville Park is to represent underrepresented artists of high craft. My goal is to pair the best minds and artistry and craft in music to the best visual and performance art. I really feel that people’s eyes have gotten bigger from constantly looking at things, but their ears have gotten much smaller. People don’t listen to records, they don’t really put effort into making records, and if they do it’s just ear candy, it’s less performance-based, there’s less heart and soul, it’s not as evolved. So I wanted to have a venue for counterculture music, like dark wave, coldwave, post-whatever, and new chamber and post-classical music. I felt that if I put the music in a gallery context, it would up the ante, like, “This music better be pretty damn good because these visual artists are so good.”

art by Alexander Barton, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: So all the shows are music plus visual art plus something else?
Ian: Well, no. We have several different programs, and sometimes we combine them. There’s a gallery art program, with one show a month, either a group show or a few specific artists. Then there’s an archival film program, which includes one of our most famous shows, Noir Night. We’ve also had cartoon carnival stuff, we’ve had optics, we’re now working with the curators at Millenium Theatre and Anthology Film Archives, and we’re starting to have closer ties with the Kitchen. Then we have a TV program on Manhattan Neighborhood Network with my good friend Scott Kiernan, who does ESP TV. Then we have a performance art program. There are only four galleries and art spaces in New York City that host performance art. We’ve done a bunch of performances in the past, recently Esther Neff and The Penelopes and Performancy Forum. And finally we have the music program. We do workshops too, we’ve hosted a lot of extremely successful workshops, the biggest one that everyone constantly asks for is the electronics in music workshop for circuit bending. But we just can’t do it again without funding.

circuit-bending workshop, photo from Vaudeville Park's Facebook

brooklyn spaces: What about your own art? What kind of music do you play?
Ian: I do a lot of stuff, I’m a multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer. I was the first featured soloist in the Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in November, and I made all these crazy handmade instruments and soundscape synthesizer stuff. I’ve done a lot of film scores, dance scores, music for fashion. I mostly do new works for chamber. The music that I’m doing now, the best way to put it is the orchestral coldwave height of pop that was never made. It’s like post-romantic coldwave blitz with eighteenth- to nineteenth-century post-classical music, and also a lot of Latin jazz and obscurities.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of your favorite shows here.
Ian: One of my favorites was a Crystalline Flux installation, because one of the things I want to push for Vaudeville Park is doing something totally new, something that’s almost like a trip back to Bauhaus, or Kaprow’s Happenings, which were installations and events where a whole art space was transformed into a stage full of specific performers. So a bunch of my friends—Ben Lee of Beta Copperhead, Brent Arnold, Anthony Johnson, Caleb Missure, and Naomi Rice, who’s in a band Next Wave Festival—we transformed the whole space into a stage that would specifically fit one performer, kind of like a static music video. That was one of the most special art events I’ve ever been to. Also Noir Night is one of my favorite ones, I really think it works with the intention of the space. And I really like the Dreamtigers and Avatar Atavistic, and Myra Brim’s gallery show “April Sky,” and Christy Walsh’s dance piece, this flamenco classical guitar thing. I like pretty much everything here, it’s kind of a blur.

[below, from Ladies of Experimental Music: Leah Coloff, Meaghan Burke, and Valerie Kuehne; photos by Maximus]

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk a little more about the neighborhood. Do you feel like being here on this weird cusp between Bushwick and Williamsburg affects the space?
Ian: Vaudeville Park is not a Williamsburg space, I’m not trying to make it “Williamsburg-y.” It’s the gateway to Bushwick arts, since we’re on the first block of Bushwick. During the last Bushwick Open Studios, the L train was down and we were the first place people saw. That’s a great festival, Arts in Bushwick works really hard.

brooklyn spaces: You’re getting a lot of attention from the media lately, but ultimately, this is a small space. Is there any worry you’ll get too well known?
Ian: No. Lots of shows here are really packed, but I’m trying to only do things that make sense in a smaller space. This is an arts venue, it’s done with no money but with the best programming and art possible. And by being good to people and treating artists well and believing in this community, you can go a long way. People who have run spaces like this, they do it for a couple years and then give up, and they have every damn right to, because it can be really hard and really frustrating. But what happens if you don’t give up? What happens if every time you think, “This is as far as I can go,” you’re like “Let’s go further”? What happens if we just keep expanding more and doing better? I’m really excited and happy to be doing this and to have all these special people involved. I’m really lucky.

***

Like this? Read about more arts venues: Chez Bushwick, Gowanus Ballroom, Bushwick Starr, Monster Island, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Fort Useless