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

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

bushwick city farms

oriana on 8 Jul ’12

space type: community farm | neighborhood: bushwick | active since: 2008 | links: website, facebook, twitter

The first thing my sister Laurel told me about Bushwick City Farms was that being a volunteer there went a tremendous way toward assuaging her gentrifier guilt about living in Bed-Stuy. “As soon as I unlock the gate, a dozen kids come running out of the housing projects nearby, asking if they can plant seeds, or paint planter boxes, or just play tag in the space,” she said. “And the parents come by every day to thank us for what we’re doing for the community, and for keeping an eye on their kids.” My experience was the same. The kids are so eager to help that we couldn’t do any of the planting ourselves—they practically grabbed the seeds out of our hands. And when I talked to some of the adults in the area—who were barbecuing on the sidewalk, and insisted on giving me a heaping plate of grilled chicken, sausages, and rice and beans—they reiterated how happy they were about the farm as a safe community space.

kids planting (photo by Alix)

Bushwick City Farms is really one of the most beautiful projects I’ve had the pleasure of profiling. Like Trees Not Trash, they’ve appropriated two abandoned lots (so far), and they’ve filled them with fowl—chickens, ducks, guinea hens, even a turkey—and gardens. They’re growing more than fifty different fruits, vegetables, and plants, and the entire yield is given out to the community. They’ve got a small version of the Free Store outside of one farm, where people can take or leave clothes, small appliances, and other household goods. In the past they’ve offered ESL classes in the farms, and the spaces serve as a gathering place for members of the community, as well as an opportunity for food education—one day we were harvesting and passing out arugula, and we watched many people try the spicy green for the first time.

Jason with a bucket of greens (photo by me)

The project is entirely volunteer run, and nearly everything has been donated. They’re always looking for more helping hands, so head on out to see them if you’d like to participate in this incredible project. But first, read my interview with Vinnie, Jason, Aneta, and Laurel.

planters (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Vinnie: My wife Masha, the founder, got permission from the owner of the lot on Broadway to use it as a community garden, and she and the original group of volunteers came in and started cleaning the place out. Shortly thereafter, Jason and I got involved, and other people started helping out, and little by little we started building and expanding. The goal was always to produce fresh, organic food for those in the community, and to provide a space that people could come in and enjoy. We also want to provide food education, to bring people back to basics as far as where food comes from, how to grow and produce it responsibly, and how to eat healthy.
Jason: People are so out of touch with where their food comes from, how food is grown, and what types of food you should be eating.

Jason and Laurel (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: What was the lot like when you got here?
Vinnie: It was overgrown by weeds, and it had been used as an illegal dumping site for years, so it was completely full of garbage. It was a year before it started really looking like something.

Outside the Broadway lot (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: What did you start with?
Vinnie: We had chickens and some container gardens. The garden itself went through a kind of a metamorphosis over the first couple of seasons. We didn’t really know what we were doing; a lot of it was a learning process. We didn’t know about the extent of the contamination in the soil, and we had built smaller beds that didn’t have enough depth to them, which were taken apart eventually.

Inside the Broadway lot (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: What’s the soil contaminated with?
Jason: Everything. A hundred years of building and collapsing and building and collapsing.
Vinnie: Dumping too. The Stockton lot has been both an apartment building and a gas station in the past, and then it was vacant for two or three decades. It’s basically a landfill; there’s no real soil. It’s mostly cement, brick particles, and garbage.
Jason: There was a tent city, and people had been living in there up until like 2009. Apparently there was a crazy fight, some guy bashed someone’s head in with a shovel, and then there was a fire and their huts burned down, so it was vacant when we went in there.

Planting tomatoes in the Stockton lot (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: When was that?
Jason: Earth Day 2011. We’d had our eye on it for a while, and we just decided to go in and start cleaning it out. We spent a long time bagging up trash, raking up the rubble, cleaning it up. We planted some flowers that first day, and then later we built the fence and got some container gardens started. We just started slowly building it up.

container gardens (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: So you didn’t have prior permission to be in the Stockton space the way you did with the one on Broadway?
Vinnie: No, we just went in and did it. Eventually the manager contacted us. He asked us to write a proposal to the owner, and we did that, and we were given permission to stay. Most people, if they’re not using the land, are pretty open to the idea of community gardens. Or at least that’s been our experience so far.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: What was the reaction from the community?
Vinnie: People loved it, the kids especially. They really love the chickens.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: Where did the chickens come from?
Vinnie: The first ones came from the pollo de vido, the live poultry shop on Myrtle. Since then we’ve gotten more from there, and a lot of the birds have been donated. The turkey was left here on Thanksgiving; we never saw who brought it.

guinea hen & chickens (photo by Alix)

brooklyn spaces: And what about all the building materials and things? Where did all that come from?
Vinnie: We get different things from people in the community: grocery stores have donated produce, gardening companies have given us leftover plants, landscaping companies gave us all the woodchips. There’s a company that ships huge stones, and they have these pallets that are only good for one use, so we get all of our wood from them.

building planter boxes (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: What all do you have growing now?
Vinnie: Oh, there’s so much. We have spinach, kale, all kinds of lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes…
Jason: Cucumbers, green beans, cilantro, basil, mint, eggplants, a fig tree…
Vinnie: Roses, apple trees…
Jason: Pear trees, peach trees, nectarines, plums, peppers, elephant ears—just tons and tons of stuff.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: And all the food gets donated to the community?
Jason: Yeah. Sundays at 2 o’clock we do distribution, we give out the eggs from the chickens and whatever we’re harvesting that week. The food is given out on an as-needed basis, but we don’t check credentials or anything. We trust people to need what they take and take what they need.

garden behind the chicken coop (photo by me)

brooklyn spaces: How many people are involved in keeping this going?
Jason: There’s a core group of about ten volunteers who come to work here almost every day, but if you include all the kids in the neighborhood and everyone who stops by to help out when they can, we probably have more than fifty people.

photo by me

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Vinnie: Probably by the end of the summer we’ll be thinking about expansion, going into other lots, getting schools involved, doing more educational programs.

photo by Alix

brooklyn spaces: What’s the most rewarding part of this for you?
Aneta: I like that people get really excited about it. People are so thrilled, like, “Wow, I’ve never seen a live chicken before!” That’s really fascinating and rewarding. People are happy, really happy to see this.
Vinnie: It reminds a lot of people of where they’re from, so it’s really nice to see their reactions. And the kids just love it. It’s really great to work with the kids.
Jason: For a kid to see something go from seed to harvest is unbelievable, that’s so cool. And they’re more likely to want to eat what they’ve planted, so we’re planting seeds in a lot of different ways.
Laurel: I think the community-building is my favorite part. Providing a space to bring people together and to meet their neighbors. It’s a diverse neighborhood, and I think it’s great to challenge boundaries and remember that people are people.

photo by Alix

Like this? Read about more community spaces: Time’s Up, Body Actualized Center, Boswyck Farms, Books Through Bars, No-Space, Trinity Project, #OccupyWallStreet art show

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

page not found (chaos cooking)

oriana on 26 Feb ’12

space type: event space | neighborhood: bushwick | active since: 2009 | links: website, facebook

Like Red Lotus Room’s Shanghai Mermaid, Page Not Found is best known for one of its recurring events: Chaos Cooking, “A continuing social experiment where up to 60 people cook 60 recipes in one kitchen, four burners, one oven. All dishes must be finished in four hours while everyone is drinking wine, socializing, and putting delectable food in their mouths.”

all photos by Maya Edelman

It’s every bit as fun—and delicious—as it sounds. The last time I went, I ate: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola, pork & Brussels sprout shooters with pickled cauliflower chasers, nachos, Persian-spiced truffles, edamame hummus, tiramisu, beer & cheese soup, winter melon salad, and dozens of other delicacies—all made on the spot, all at once. I made endive stuffed with goat cheese, raisins, and an amazing sauce from the Brooklyn Salsa Company. The event, of which there have been more than twenty in a couple of years, draws all kinds of people, from all ages and demographics, including hipsters, foodies, neighbors, Burners, Couchsurfers, and the generally curious. Everyone is invariably kind and courteous and can’t wait to hear what you’re cooking.

my dish

Page Not Found is home to Joe and Margaret and their two cats, Baloney Gabba-Goo and Eddie Tuna Cupcake Mohawk Feather Teddybear Pancake Weezer Haiku (says Margaret: “We usually call her either Pupcake or Fatty Tuna or Haiku”). They used to host some wild parties, but these days they’re more likely to have art shows, modern dance performances, and bands in their space. But Chaos Cooking is still their pride and joy, and they’ve just launched a website to spread the word, and to encourage people to host Chaos Cookings in their own city, town, or backyard.

Joe & Margaret amid the chaos

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to do this?
Joe: It started out of a longing for that feeling you get when you’re with your family during the holidays and everyone’s in the kitchen cooking at the same time, chatting and gossiping and catching up and laughing and asking each other, “What can I do to help?” It’s just a great feeling. So we tried it once, with eighteen friends, and it was wonderful. I think the second one had twenty-five, and we thought that would be crazy, but it still seemed to work.
Margaret: People kept asking, “Can I bring my friend to the next one?” And we were like, “Next one?”

brooklyn spaces: I first read about Chaos Cooking on Nonsense NYC. What made you decide to open it up to the community?
Joe: We like people, and we figure if someone want to come to an event like this, they’re probably someone we’d like to meet. Nonsense is an amazing list, it kind of changed my life. But listing there was a bit of a controlled experiment, because not everyone’s reading it.

brooklyn spaces: What are some really memorable dishes that people have made?
Margaret: One time Ryan did this seven-day marinated pork. David once made lamb with yogurt-truffle sauce.
Joe: There was this one guy, I wish I could remember his name, who was traveling in India, and there’s a certain type of tea that you can only get on this one mountain there, so he hiked the mountain and picked this tea and brought it back and made this chai concoction that was just amazing, like nothing else I’ve ever had.
Margaret: One time my brother and his girlfriend made chocolate lollipops with Pop Rocks in the middle.
Joe: There was chocolate-covered pomegranate, that was really good. I save all the sign-in sheets, which list what people made. There’s some incredible stuff. Baklava, peaches and pancetta, coconut-curry lentils… What we really like is that the concept is so simple, and people are so self-reliant. The more we got into it, the more we realized that anybody could do this. There are already Chaos Cooking communities that are bigger than the one in New York.
Margaret: There’s one in Winston-Salem, I recently learned. I think they most likely heard about it from the New York Times article that was written about us, or the NPR piece. Theirs seems a little different, more families, with a down-home kind of feel, but it looks like they have a great time.
Joe: Chaos Cooking is an idea that spans gender and age and really any sort of demographic, because everyone loves to cook, and most people love to do it together.
Margaret: Especially with people you don’t know very well. It’s really easy to get to know people through cooking.
Joe: It makes people feel comfortable, and I think one of the things that makes it work is that everyone has something to do and be proud of, something to share and something to receive, and something to talk about. It’s like all social barriers are resolved.

brooklyn spaces: I’m always struck by how calm and kind the vibe is. How did you manage to make these events where everybody’s just happy and wants to talk to each other?
Margaret: Everybody’s eating!
Joe: Yeah, I think that’s the trick. Also, if you’re a complete jerk, you’re probably not going to go to a cooking event.
Margaret: I think if you’re a jerk, you’re probably more of a taker. And if you come to a cooking event, you’re expected to do just as much as everybody else.
Joe: I never thought about that, that’s a really good point. I think you’re right, the people who are drawn to it are givers or contributors. But you’re definitely getting a lot also. You’re eating a lot.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Bushwick has anything to do with the way this came about?
Joe: Well, we really like having it here. It’s great when the neighbors come over and cook with us. There’s a Puerto Rican family next door and the mom is really into it. And our neighbor Manny, a middle-aged African American woman, she brought a couple of her girlfriends once and they all cooked with us. I think that’s really cool. There’s a feeling of frontier here in Bushwick, and there’s a little bit of risk. But our neighbors love us, and we love our neighbors. We don’t hold ourselves in. The neighborhood around here is a little rough, but the neighbors are awesome.

Like this? Read about more food event spaces: Egg & Dart Club, Ger-Nis, Breuckelen Distilling, Treehaus, Grub at Rubulad

running rebel studios (formerly semi-legit)

oriana on 5 Feb ’12

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: commercial space | active since: 2010 | links: running rebel (website, facebook); proliferation publishing (website, facebook)

One of the reasons I started this project is that I was alarmed at how fleeting so much of the underground can be. The people who drive the creative classes are focused on creating, on making art and beauty and enhancing underground culture, which tends to result in less of a focus on trivialities like leases and fire codes and the law in general. I seem to be constantly hearing about the unceremonious demise of so many brilliant spaces—the 123 Community Center being forced out by their landlord, Bushwick Project for the Arts getting evicted by the city, House of Yes (in its original incarnation) burning down, Silent Barn being ransacked, Monkeytown and Change You Want to See defeated by endless rent hikes.

photo from Passion Faction

But there are other ways for a space to come to an end. Sometimes it’s intentional, for one reason or another, and in the best case it’s on the creators’ own terms. So it is with 6 Charles Place. The Bushwick warehouse used to be called Semi-Legit, and was known for underground events. Passion Faction threw dance parties with DJ Spanky spinning and Nicky Digital taking pix, Team San San had an art show, there were anarchist benefits and lectures, and plenty of musicians came through, including Nomadic War Machine, Rosa Apatrida, Shady Hawkins, Anchorites, Krunk Pony, Ash Borer, and Woe.

But those days are behind them now. Today the space is divided into two businesses: Running Rebel Studios and Proliferation Publishing.

photo from Passion Faction

Nick has been operating Running Rebel since October 2011. It’s a big, private, very malleable space, and they’ve done a lot of different work already, including photos for Nylon and Inked magazines, fashion shoots for Olcay Gulsen and Arrojo Soho, and music videos for Imaginary Friends and Rosie Vanier.

brooklyn spaces: What made you shift from throwing parties to running a business?
Nick: I thought we could make something profitable, since no one can get jobs now and you have to do everything yourself in order to survive.

brooklyn spaces: Was it hard to get it up and running?
Nick: It was a lot of work. I renovated the entire thing, painted the entire ceiling by hand, painted every single brick, twice, because the first coat got so disgusting and dirty. I built a bathroom and changing room. And I got all this equipment, including a nineteen-foot cyc wall.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your business philosophy?
Nick: I try to be friendly with everyone. I don’t think that pissing people off is the right way to go about anything, especially when you’re trying to develop relationships. I’d rather take a loss now and have someone come back again later, rather than ripping them off and having them hate us forever.

brooklyn spaces: Is running a photo studio something you always planned to do?
Nick: No. I have a degree in German. But I had the idea and ran with it. This is cool, it’s strange. It’s fine for now. I can live, I can eat. What else do you need?

photo by Alix Piorun

And then there’s Proliferation Publishing, New York’s only twenty-four-hour print shop, run by Adam. They use really cool old machines from the sixties and seventies that they’ve acquired at auctions and garage sales, including one that was used to print NYU’s diplomas for years. And they bought what probably amounts to a lifetime supply of ink for about $60. They print everything from take-out menus to wedding invitations to vinyl banners.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How do you know how to work all this stuff? Did you know how to use the machines when you bought them?
Adam: No, we just bought them on impulse. Then we found PDFs and guides and shit online and taught ourselves in our garage. We have this one incredible troubleshooting manual written by this hippie guy in the sixties. The book starts, “Around 1950 I was searching for Nirvana in the woods in New Mexico.”

brooklyn spaces: How do you find your clients?
Adam: We go and bother pizza places and shit and we’re like “Hey we can print menus for cheaper than what you’re paying now,” and they’re like, “Okay, cool.” And people come in to print album covers for their bands, business cards, political posters, stuff like that.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Adam: I want to do books eventually, but not right now. We’ve got to get a book binder and a paper cutter first. We’re also going to start offering photo-printing services, so people can shoot photos at Running Rebel and then print them here. This could be a full-time gig, and it probably will be eventually. But we’re in it for the long haul, so we’re taking our time.

photo by Alix Piorun

Both Adam and Nick were kind enough to offer discounts for Brooklyn Spaces readers. At Running Rebel they’ll give you a full-day weekday photo shoot for $300, and at Proliferation Publishing you can get 1,000 business cards or stickers for $75. Go support Bushwick small businesses! Email them at runningrebelstudios@gmail.com or adam@proliferationpublishing.com.

***

Like this? Read about other print shops & photo studios: Acme Studio, Gowanus Print Lab, Bushwick Print Studio, Werdink, Factory Brooklyn, Bond Street Studio

greenroom brooklyn

oriana on 28 Dec ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: apartment & party space | active since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Self-described as “Brooklyn’s underground launchpad for performing artists,” Greenroom Brooklyn is run by violinist and dancer Johnny Arco, with help from Ryan Alexander and several friends. They’ve thrown nine parties in the last year, primarily on their roof, and they bring in lots of musicians and DJs to keep everyone dancing and to foster impromptu and spontaneous performances throughout the night.

the first party, photo by Dylan Hess

They invited me out to a party in September, and I got there as they were putting the finishing touches on the rooftop decorations. It looked amazing, full of lights and art, with instrument clusters in three corners. And then it started to rain. I watched the assorted crew go from skeptical to worried, and then, once the decision was made to move the party downstairs into the loft proper, I was privy to (and a small part of) the most organized, polite, un-frantic overhaul I could have imagined. With fewer than a dozen people, in less than an hour, everything was brought inside down makeshift ladders and through half-functional windows, all the furniture in the loft was rearranged, lights and amps and mics were all wired and hung and assembled throughout the space. By the time they opened the doors to a slightly restless and sizable crowd, it looked like they’d planned on an indoor party all along.

Check out this video they made to introduce their space, and then read on for my Q&A with Johnny!

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?
Johnny: It evolved pretty organically. We had our first party last July; it wasn’t planned very well, but all these awesome people came. I’ve been an active musician my entire life, so I got together with some other musicians and started doing jam sessions, which turned into live music and DJ parties. We started getting better at seeing what was happening, how to get a quality crowd.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: So what, in your opinion, makes the party?
Johnny: The music’s super important, and the crowd. We make sure we have really terrific performers and DJs. And we invite people who are trying to do something, whatever it may be. That way, the ultimate goal of the party is to help people find other people who are doing things that could help them in their life, you know? People come to the party and become friends and start doing projects together.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the bands who have played here?
Johnny: They haven’t been set bands. We invite lots of musicians and they come together and play. It’s always kind of impromptu. I just make sure to invite people I respect, and say, “Oh look, there’s a microphone! There’s a guitar! What if we shine a blue light on you…?” and see what happens.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: Why did you pick this neighborhood?
Johnny: Oh man, this neighborhood totally picked me. When I first came to see the space, I had already put down a deposit on a place in the East Village. But I came here anyway, just to check it out. It was massive, with nothing built out, completely open, two walls of windows. I got here at sunset, took one look around, and pulled out my violin. I was like, “I need to play in here right now.” And it was like the most chambery, echoey, cathedral-like tone I’d ever heard in my life—well no, that’s not true, but in my home for sure. Anyway, I had to live here. And it’s been incredible. I don’t have an expensive life, I get to play music all day long, and I’m surrounded by other artists and entrepreneurs who are doing what they love and want to do. Bushwick rocks.

Johnny Arco, Reuben Cainer, & Jeff Miles, photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: As an artist, are you inspired by being in Brooklyn?
Johnny: I’ve been an artist and a performer for my entire life, but I definitely feel lucky to be in Brooklyn and have this type of space. It makes it seem like every time I pick up my instrument and play, I’m doing something special. Even if it’s just some friends hanging out, I feel like I’m performing in New York City, like I’m living and making it in the hardest place for a performer to make it. It’s not “I live in Brooklyn, now I’m inspired to be an artist.” It’s “I live in Brooklyn, and I am an artist. This is what people fucking dream of.” I think that’s what everybody here feels, whether they’re doing sound or lights or just hanging up a piece of art in an apartment. It feels so real, because it is real, the Greenroom is real, we’re really doing this. And there’s also a real responsibility, because we’re living in Brooklyn, being artists in Brooklyn, being inspired by Brooklyn. There’s an obligation to make something of quality, something we’re proud to have in Brooklyn.

photo by Dylan Hess

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Johnny: We want to set up a system so that the Greenroom isn’t just the loft space itself, but something portable that we can take with us. We want to do a loft tour throughout the country, to get in touch with other people and say, “Hey, we have a cool loft space where we can do this stuff, you have a cool loft space where you can do this stuff, can we bring our crew and our equipment over and have a good time?” We’ve already got people onboard for Philly, D.C., and Boston. We’re trying to do the whole thing next March, from Montreal down to Austin. That’s the goal.

photo by Alix Piorun

***

Like this? Read about more apartment party spaces: Bushwick Project for the Arts, Hive NYC, Egg & Dart Club, Dead Herring, Jerkhaus, Newsonic, The Schoolhouse

the schoolhouse

oriana on 4 Sep ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: art collective | active since: 1996 | links: facebook


According to The Bushwiki, PS 52 was built in 1883 and served as an arts-intensive elementary school until 1945, when it was sold for use as a manufacturing space.

I couldn’t find any information on what happened to it over the next fifty years, but the New York Times steps up to fill in the space’s modern history: in 1996, a twenty-something artist named Erin McGonigle found it listed as a rental in the Village Voice. The building was decrepit and overrun with debris, and Erin and some friends took five months getting it into livable shape. When they started living in the refurbished Schoolhouse they called themselves ORT, an acronym for “organizing resources together.” In 2002 the second floor opened, ushering in the second wave of the collective.

Some artists who passed through in those early years include: photographer David Linton, Yale drama critic Sunder Ganglani, poet Ariana Reines, composer Keiko Uenishi (who works with Issue Project Room), Grace Space director Jill McDermid, video artist Tia Dunn, Smithsonian dancer Samir Bitar, costume designer Kaibrina Sky Buck (who has paintings in the Museum of Sex), trash and performance artist Gertrude Berg, journalist Erika Yorio (who wrote for Nylon), musician Toshio Kajiwara, artist Elliot Kurtz, filmmaker Derek Deems, blogger EV Bogue, and artist Mariette Papic, who gave me a ton of information to help with this piece.

In addition to serving as home for a revolving cast of artists, the Schoolhouse (also sometimes called the Old Schoolhouse or the Old Red Schoolhouse) hosts plenty of events. A small sampling of the musicians who have performed there over the years: Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Magnum, Verbal Graffiti, Spanish Prisoners, Madame Beak, The Christopher Complex, Zachary Cale, Revival Times, The Asteroid #4, Hollow Jones, and DJ Polarity. Todd P has even put on some shows there.

The artists currently living in the Schoolhouse (there are about twenty spread over three floors) consider themselves the third wave of the collective. They run the gamut of creative pursuits, including photography and visual arts, musicians and DJs, fashion design, jewelry making, screenprinting, and even mobile art. One of the benefits of the space is of course how freaking huge it is, and though many of the bedrooms are kind of tiny, the vast common areas make up for it. I sat down with Justin, Chris, Willy, and Dave to talk about their experiences living and making art in this incredible space.

brooklyn spaces: Were you guys drawn to this space specifically, or to Bushwick in general?
Willy: The space. I’d never lived in Bushwick before, I didn’t really know much about it. I’d been to a few different spaces that were built out and thought they were cool, but I’d never seen anything like this before. You walk in here and you just feel the creative energy. And now I get to come home to it.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being here has affected the way you do your art, the choices that you make thematically or physically?
Dave: Absolutely. A big thing about this space is having people bounce off each other, and inspiring each other to be greater and to dream bigger. How could you not be affected by other creative people? You’d have to be an alien.
Justin: We all have our more and less productive periods, but for the most part, most of us are always working on something. So you go into Chris’s room and you get inspired by what he’s doing, or you go downstairs and see the screenprinting and get inspired by that. And then the building itself, having artists living here for so long, it has this energy that just resonates. It’s a give and take; the more you put into the place and the more you’re doing, the more it really gets energized. But there’s definitely always something going on that you could tap into.

brooklyn spaces: I know in the space’s early years there were some robberies and trouble with community integration. Do you feel like you guys have overcome that?
Dave: Yeah, when we started throwing the block party. Block parties are incredible, every community should do it.
Chris: The block parties are a lot of fun. We do that every summer.
Justin: Everyone in the neighborhood comes out and contributes. This year they roasted a pig.
Willy: There was a giant inflatable water slide. We had the ball-throwing machine where you get dunked.
Dave: We put speakers on the roof, there was a live mariachi band, and then we played old funk records, hip-hop, salsa, Brazilian music, for the block, you know? To show the love and appreciation we have for all art and music. It really makes it safer for the artists who live here.
Willy: Now we know everyone, everyone looks out for each other.
Dave: You have to be a part of the community. You can’t just narrow-mindedly walk past the people who live right next to you. During the block party we open up our home and show people that we’re cool, that we’re in the same struggle. Artists ain’t making a lot of money, you know what I mean? So now everybody sees each other as human beings, and that’s beautiful.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get it started? Did you just go knocking on people’s doors?
Chris: We actually did have to go door-to-door to get the petition.
Dave: Yeah, but it started before that, once we made friends with Sonny. There’s always a hawk on the block who watches, a grandfather spirit, and that’s the person you have to meet and be friends with. It was actually his idea to do the block party. And then we took our strength and went and got the permits to show that we were serious, that we were taking an initiative in the community.

brooklyn spaces: Are you involved with the greater Bushwick art community?
Dave: Yeah. Jason Andrews, who does Norte Maar and Storefront, he stumbled in on one of the music shows here and he scooped me up, and then he showed Justin’s artwork at one of his galleries, so it just all started being interconnected. I performed for the first BOS show at the Collision Machine three or four years ago. I think Arts in Bushwick really started to connect the different spaces, because everybody could come and see everybody’s space and meet each other. We do shows at the McKibben Lofts now, and they come do shows over here. It’s an ongoing artistic explosion.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any thoughts about being an artist in Bushwick these days?
Dave: I don’t think anybody can take credit for what’s happening; I think it’s universal, I think it’s a sign of the times. This area is just part of that shift. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a greater world, a new belief that we want to get together and be creative again, to be dreamers again. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everybody’s cut out to be on Wall Street, not everybody’s cut out to be a doctor. Some people just like to fucking paint, some people want to beat on a drum. And we should let that live, not stifle it with overpriced rent and over-gentrification.
Chris: As far as art in Bushwick, I think it’s awesome. I think things like Bushwick Open Studios are brilliant. We need to get more recognition out here. Manhattan’s boring, nothing’s really going on in Manhattan. People still sometimes look at Bushwick and think dangerous, like Bed-Stuy, dangerous, and I think it’s just ridiculous. People hear about us and go, “Oh, a bunch of white kids in the ghetto making art.” Not really, we’re hanging out with our neighbors, we’re doing our thing, everybody’s doing their thing, and we’ve got this beautiful space to show for it.

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Like this? Read about more art collectives: Flux Factory, Swimming Cities, Monster Island, Hive NYC, Arch P&D, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Silent Barn

950 hart gallery

oriana on 3 Aug ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: art gallery | active: 2010–2012 | links: website, blog, facebook, twitter

950 Hart came relatively late to the Bushwick gallery scene, but they were incredibly busy. In their first nine months, they put on seven shows in their space, plus one off-site at Life Café. The gallery spanned two floors, with the basement holding their permanent collection, featuring work from three of the space’s four founders: Michael Kronenberg, Antoinette Johnson, and Mikki Nylund. Sean Alday, the fourth member of the team, is a writer, blogger, videographer, and unofficial gallery historian. When I went to the opening of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” it was pleasantly busy, and several of the artists were there to talk about their work. Everyone I met was welcoming and warm, and eager to share their excitement about the project.

Due to skyrocketing rents in the neighborhood, 950 Hart closed their doors in July 2012, along with several other pioneering Bushwick galleries, including Famous Accountants and Botanic.

Q&A with Michael and Sean

brooklyn spaces: Do either of you have any prior curating experience?
Sean: All I’ve really done is construction and gardening; I learned how to make things lovely through construction, and then with gardening I learned how to put things in the right order. I did a lot of Zen gardening, so my first curating experience was making a little garden on the side of a hill. Then I got here, and I realized it’s another little garden on a hill, and it just needed to be cultivated.
Michael: Sean’s being modest; he’s actually been a godsend. He’s incredibly brilliant and very motivated, and super at coordinating and reaching out to people. He also has a really good idea of what he wants to do and a great eye for new talent.

photo by Sandee Pawan

brooklyn spaces: What made you decide to start a gallery?
Michael: We’re acquainted with a pretty large circle of creative, talented artists, and we wanted to try to get more exposure for them. We started talking about starting a gallery when we were all hanging out. Mikki and I were making art, and Sean was writing and video-documenting everything.
Sean: And Antoinette went out and got four panels and started meticulously crafting the checkerboard pieces that are now in the permanent collection. She worked on the piece for about a month straight. Every time I came by, she was working on it. It’s a very good vindication of the enthusiasm we had about doing this, and it kind of became the reason we were doing it, because everyone was so excited about it. And we all fed off of the excitement; there was no way not to.
Michael: I also want to give a big shout-out too to Grant Stoops, from Bushwick Project for the Arts. He’s the one who talked me into actually showing my stuff for the first time, and now we’ve got some of his pieces in our permanent collection, too. It’s great synergy.

E.V. Svetova and her model in front of her art

brooklyn spaces: Who are some of your favorite artists you’ve shown?
Sean: We love all of our artists, but some who come to mind are Raquel Echanique, Teddi I Rogers, Eisig Frost, Irena Romendik, E.V. Svetova, Sandee Pawan, Worm Carnevale, Jarvis Earnshaw, and Dan Victor.

permanent collection

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about some of the different shows.
Sean: The first show was called “950 Hart,” and just putting it up was big for us. The second one, “Broken Hearts,” was even more exciting, and the responses from both of them were so different that it pushed us to do the third show, “The Garden of Eve.” For that one, we wanted something that was going to push us to be more creative than we had been, and also be unique enough that it would draw more artists and more people who appreciate art spaces.

photo from 950 Hart's tumblr

brooklyn spaces: Do you prefer a certain type of art?
Michael: We like to encourage figurative and abstract art to a certain extent. We like to give enough of a leading narrative so that people can either take it and run with it or reflect back or come in with something completely off in left field. But as far as a criterion for what we show, if we respond to it emotionally, we show it. It doesn’t matter what your name is. We’re not particularly interested in pedigrees; we look for people who are sincere and generate an emotional response from the viewer. We’re looking for positive, energetic, upbeat pieces that are made in Brooklyn—and certain other places as well, as the octopus spreads out his tentacles.

brooklyn spaces: Are you a part of the greater Bushwick art scene?
Michael: Yes. This year we did a show for Bushwick Open Studios, which allowed us to interact more with the community, and let them know we’re here. We had a really good response from the organizers; they were so supportive.
Sean: After that, we did a show at Life Café. Actually, we put up three different shows over the course of a month, framed as art battles.

"Bloom" by Michael Noel

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Michael: To have as many shows as possible, and to eventually expand outward and upward.
Sean: For me, the main thing is progressing the community. We want to leave behind a roadmap for the kids who come after us, because eventually there’s going to be curiosity about what happened here in Bushwick. That’s why I’m videoing everything and blogging as much as I can about what we’re doing. It’s an easy way to feel like you’re doing something for the community of the future.

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Like this? Read about more art galleries: Ugly Art Room, Wondering Around Wandering, Concrete Utopia, See.Me, Central Booking, Micro Museum, Invisible Dog