In the late 1970s, New York’s Lower East Side was a shadow of its former self. The infamous working-class neighborhood, long home to immigrants landing on America’s east coast, has become unlivable, evoking the horrors described in photographer Jacob A. Riis’ memorable 1890 book, How the other half lives.
About 80 percent of the neighborhood is deserted, as landlords paid arsonists to destroy it for an insurance payout, while the government arrested the remaining residents for non-payment of taxes, leading to miles of abandoned buildings and vacant lots. As squatters, outcasts and rebels infiltrate the predominantly Latino community, a new art scene is emerging.
On December 30, 1979, the collective of artists of the center to the (Collaborative Projects) organizes a “tactical occupation” and invests an abandoned building at 123 rue Delancey. On New Year’s Eve 1980 they open to the public The real estate showwith the collaborative work of 35 creators denouncing the early gentrification of Soho and Tribeca, where artist communities have flourished.
The next day, officials from the New York Department of Housing Conservation and Development speak. But the artists refuse to give up. On 16 January an agreement was negotiated, and the city granted them a local site at 156 Rivington Street: thus ABC No Rio. The art center takes its name from an old plaque of a notary and law firm which originally read: “Abogado Con Notario”. But over time, so many letters have disappeared that only a curious poetic combination remains.
Governed by volunteer trustees – artists Bobby G, Rebecca Howland, Alan Moore and Christy Rupp -, ABC No Rio defines itself as a “center of artistic creation” conceived in reaction to the art world and theater of capitalist obedience in New York, sectarian galleries and organized according to a hierarchy.
Located not far from an open-air heroin trafficking hub, ABC No Rio is often burglarized and the building has deteriorated over the years. But despite everything, it is fast becoming a mecca for experimental artists from all over the world, eager to express their creativity rather than aiming for wealth and recognition.
The art of enterprise
Alan Moore, founder of ABC No Rio, of which he is a volunteer director, moved to New York in 1974 to work with the Artforum magazinesdirected by John Coplans. There he quickly forges connections with the experimental scene that disrupts the art landscape. “I joined a group of artists called Colab, labeled as punk”reports Moore, who has just published his recollections in a work titled Art Worker: Making Time in the New York Art World.
Thanks to ABC No Rio, the creators introduce the specific “Do It Yourself” spirit of punk into the art world. Challenged to give life to a dilapidated gallery, without sufficient means to repair the damage caused by neglect, the administrators had to join forces with the artists by advocating the bourgeois comfort of the “white cubes”, these sanitized exhibition spaces.
The first show, Artists for survivalorganized by Jon Kellery on the Lower East Side, as part of a series of pro-disarmament shows, which opened in May 1980. It featured the work of a dozen artists, including Tom Otterness and Stefan Eins, directors of Fashion MODA, in the Bronx .
“I think the idea of the ABC No Rio artists was that everything was closed to them and that they themselves should create places to promote their art, which was anti-capitalist. It was a political move.”explains Marc H. Miller, founder of Gallery 98co-author of the book ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of the Lower East Side Gallery (1985), in collaboration with Moore.
This is of the same opinion. “The occupation [de bâtiments abandonnés] it was a political projecthe said. “We represented the ‘opera left’, in the words of a writer whose name I don’t remember. We had a social conscience, inseparable from our cultural commitment. I don’t think ABC No Rio served to launch artists, as some might have hoped. »
Either way, the innovations of Moore and his partners, directors of ABC No Rio for the first three years, paved the way for the legendary East Village art scene that would develop in the mid-1980s.
Portrait of a community
Though the Lower East Side has been devastated, it remains a densely populated neighborhood that retains its culture through thick and thin. “The community has been an inspiration”, is Alan Moore. “We were trying to be available and fit in, not just be a bunch of white artists having fun in their private space. »
ABC No Rio sets up shop on Clinton Street in the Wedding District next to an abandoned photography studio – inspirational photographer Tom Warren. “Tom could sneak into the back building, which was filled with old photos taken over the years”Moore reports. “ He collected them and exhibited them in his photographic studio set up in the gallery. He had a 4×5 camera and took black and white Polaroid pictures. She kept the negatives and sold the portraits for $1.”
In the fall of 1981, Warren made portraits at the ABC No Rio premises, installing a studio photo portable – an approach he would pursue, in other places, throughout the decade. These portraits of artists and local residents are reproduced in a recently published work titled Tom Warren: The 1980s New York Art Scene – Portrait Studio / Visual Journal. True portraits of an era, they embody the community spirit of interactive art.
“Everyone agreed to put abstraction and formalism at a distance, in favor of rooting in the real world”explains Marc H. Miller. “People themselves wanted to be photographed, not caught out in the street, or the kind of shot you show your family. I had just come back from Amsterdam where I was making a living with my Polaroid, in clubs and bars, and it was very similar to the way Tom worked in the sense that people wanted pictures of themselves for their own pleasure. »
Conservation and rebirth
Since the beginning of ABC No Rio, photography has occupied a central place, whether developing prints in the darkroom, exhibiting works or recording events and performances. For reach ABC No money on the riverAlan Moore and Marc H. Miller have sifted through an extraordinary body of visual archives, including photographs, artworks, but also posters, flyers and other ephemera, a testament to the energy of the do-it-yourself spirit of the time.
“Keeping track was essential in 1970s art, and this trend was later confirmed, as was the interest in archiving”says Miller. “The purpose of this book has been to trace the history of ABC No Rio before 1983, when Jack Waters and Peter Cramer, a gay couple deeply involved in theatre, took over management of the center. »
While ABC No Rio’s artistic orientation has changed over the years, its vocation as an open cultural community center has remained the same. The original premises have been demolished and plans for a new building are being developed. Its goal is to be a multi-purpose arts and community center, including a darkroom, a screen printing laboratory, a desktop publishing library, a multimedia center as well as spaces dedicated to artistic and musical performances, and to educational and community . .
Art Worker: Making Time in the New York Art World is published by the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
