PROJECTS
Projects: Happened, Happening, and Might Yet
ABC No Rio and Loisaida in NYC
Going forward, I want to produce an “archival laboratory” around the 40 year run of the NYC cultural center ABC No Rio. That would be a semi-public year-long event to gather in the stories of all those who participated in that extraordinary experimental space on the Lower East Side of New York during decades of dynamic change in the city and the barrio.
My friends and collaborators started ABC No Rio. We accounted for our own first few years. But since then all that has happened at that extraordinary place has passed like water under the bridge. While other museums and noncommercial so-called ‘alternative spaces’ have published books about their history, the always under-funded often political ABC No Rio has not.
Here’s the current proposal. Of course there’s no money for that. But we shall see….
The idea of an “archival laboratory”, both in person and online, is rather cutting edge. It’s a partly DIY ad hoc attempt to produce an integrated physical archive through networking in a place (on-site) and online among people who may now be widely scattered from NYC. And, as in past historically themed shows at ABC No Rio, artists who didn’t live the time would produce reflections on what piques them. We start with the physical materials held by ABC No Rio and myself, ideally in 2022, and proceed at intervals throughout the year. There’s interest among a number of folks and some institutions, but as noted, no do-re-mi. So we’ll see.
The archival laboratory and public exhibitions related to that project (see Collections section of this website) would be a giant step towards the institutional placement of the ABC No Rio archive and collection.
Squatting
Since I was sidelined by academia, I pursued a research no one would fund – the story of squatting in Europe. Starting in 2009, I worked with a collective called SqEK, the Squatting Europe Kollective. I published six issues of an informational zine called House Magic: The Bureau of Foreign Correspondence. (Six issues are here: sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc. The last issue, the 7th, is here: otherforms.net/house-magic.) I ran a blog throughout those years called “Occupations & Properties”, which is still extant with occasional postings at: http://occuprop.blogspot.com/.
In 2015, drawing on the House Magicissues, I published Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below with Minor Compositions, and Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces, an anthology co-edited with Alan Smart. That book was published by Other Forms and the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest. (You can access both books as free PDFs at the website linked on this page.) In addition to the blog “Occupations & Properties” I tweet about squatting events and issues at @joeblowenarbol.
I want to do two more books on the subject, one in English and Spanish about squatting in South America, and another big book of occupied social centers in Europe, past and present. I need collaborators. Contact me if you are interested in those projects 98bowery.com.
Running in the Background
The long-term problem of digitizing scarce and marginal videotapes held by the MWF Video Club is ongoing. The XFR Collective in NYC, listed among my collaborators, is working on the collective. I still grab squatting-related and art-political items for the Interference Archive in Brooklyn. Most active among Colab members is Coleen Fitzgibbon, and her websites are listed in the “Collaborators” section of this part of the website.
Many of my other friends and collaborators are also listed there. As projects with them heat up, I will post about them in the bulletin board plugin on the splash page of this website. 98bowery.com
Neverland
In truth, I can’t stop scheming. Some of those ideas are rather out there – a jazz cafe and hostel in the countryside of northern Spain; the “History of Cinema on Staten Island”, and a television series about the lives and legends of antiquarians – antique dealers – in Europe. Call me: I’ve got a treatment!
We accounted for our own first few years
Friends, collaborators and hoped-for partners on some of these projects:
Marc Miller, 98 Bowery
ABC No Rio
The organization is currently homeless as its building project grinds along. I am a member of the Visual Arts committee.
Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space: MoRUS
An unlikely Lower East Side institution, MoRUS has the ground floor and basement of a squat. They are dedicated to the history and living presence of squats and community gardens in Loisaida. My books and SqEK books are sold here.
Interference Archive
An all-volunteer autonomous archive with a mission “to explore the relationship between cultural production and social movements”. They house the SqEK/House Magic book collection, as well as lots of posters and ephemera from squats which I collected for them.
Clemente
ABC No Rio’s temporary office is in the Clemente, aka the Clemente Soto Vélez cultural and educational center, near the site of their old building on Rivington Street. Hoping to do more with them.
Solo Foundation
Long-time friend and advisor runs a friendly and available non-profit umbrella.
Howl! Happening
“Preserving the past and celebrating the contemporary culture of Manhattan’s East Village and Lower East Side”, Howl Happening gallery has put on most of the most important recent exhibitions around our shared histories. Hoping to do more with them.
More Long-Term Partners
Colab artists group
Colab itself
run by a few members…
Colab TV
XFR Collective
MWF Video Club catalogue (inactive)
[Link to NM_XFRSTN_NEWSPRINT.pdf]
Content from the MWF Video Club collection was transferred and mounted to the non-profit archive.org website at:
This work continues.
ABM Confecciones
(art gallery)
| Facebook | Twitter (@AbmConfecciones)
Vallekas (Madrid) Gestionado por un grupo de ocho personas, ABM carece de entidad legal o jurídica y no recibe (ni desea). We did a show in 2019 of the Interference Archive and the JustSeeds poster series “Peoples History”.
Autonomedia
Autonomedia is an autonomous zone for arts radicals in both old and new media.
Minor Compositions
Minor Compositions. is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions…
Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
Other Forms
Miscellaneous Insurrectionary Macroinstructions.
Traficantes de Sueños
Librería, Distribuidora, Editorial. Proyecto de producción, formación y comunicación política. They distribute the Making Room anthology in Spain.