L-R: Holly Hughes, Moe Angelos, Martha Wilson, Carmelita Tropicana (photo: Cassidy Dawn Graves)
Last Thursday, the theater at MoMA went back to the 20th century when Performing Difference: Gender in the 1980s Downtown Scene, a day of panel discussions presented in conjunction with the exhibit “Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983.”, took over one of the museum’s spacious screening rooms.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 26
GIFoween
Brooklyn Bazaar, 150 Greenpoint Ave., Greenpoint; 7pm; free
The web’s best animators set out to prove that everything is scarier when it’s looped for all eternity at this contest from the folks at GIPHY and Brooklyn’s Animation Block Party. The coolest entries are being screened and measured up by celebrity judges at the Brooklyn Bazaar’s new four-story space — here’s hoping for lots of animated homages to the dancing pumpkin man. Plus, on Saturday BK Bazaar is doing their “Brooklyn Fright Bazaar,” with musical tributes to The Cramps and The Bee Gees, games, karaoke (guess they found a manager), a Halloween drinking game contest (yikes), food and more.
“A night at Danceteria,” pictured are Ethyl Eichelberger, Keith Haring, Cookie Mueller & John Sex Danceteria, New York City 1984 (Photograph by Joseph Modica)
A new exhibition at La MaMa brings together the various threads of New York City nightlife, art, and HIV/AIDS activism. The close ties were always there but curators, gallerists, and artists seem to be reassessing spaces that are thought to be reserved for escapism and debauchery. Osman Can Yerebakan and Emily Colucci (who has contributed to this blog in the past) are the curatorial team behind Party Out of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980. The show has been in the works for two years, so Colucci and her curatorial partner have been able to compile an incredible array of archival materials, photographs, and work by artists who are long gone and contemporary artists and activists who are ensuring the party rages on.
It’s going to be a throwback weekend off of Tompkins Square Park. Not only is Clayton Patterson holding court Friday at Pyramid Club, but on Saturday and Sunday, the annual concerts commemorating the Tompkins Square Park Riot — which he so famously documented — return to the park.
In addition to performances by hippie holdover David “The Pope Smokes Dope” Peel and the usual array of hardcore/punk bands with names like Nihilistics and Transgendered Jesus (no Porno Dracula this year?), parkgoers will be treated to a free installment of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, courtesy of the East Village’s own Kembra Pfahler.
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Back when The Times triggered laments of “RIP LES” by reporting that Clayton Patterson was leaving the neighborhood for the Austrian Alps, we knew we wouldn’t be seeing the last of the legendary documentarian — and he told us as much. So it’s no surprise to hear that Patterson is teaming up with DAMEHT — the band that put on his farewell exhibit, “The $16 Dollar Burger Show” — for a show at Pyramid Club this Friday.
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