Drastic Classicism at the Kitchen / 1981 / Rhys Chatham, David Linton, Nina Canal, Ned Sublette, © Paula Court
Here is a picture of the original Kitchen when it was at the Mercer Arts Center on Mercer Street. The picture makes it look at lot smaller than it actually was. - Rhys
Throughout the period of modernity, after the time of enlightenment and industrialization, society has always needed someplace special to go in order to dream; whether in Prague, or Bohemia under Rudolf II during the renaissance period, or in the late 19th and early 20th century in Paris when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent working class areas of Paris, becoming known as les Bohémians.
Something similar happened in New York City during the early 60s. Sculptors, choreographers and musicians in particular need relatively large spaces for their work: choreographers for their dance companies, sculptors for their large works, and composer/performers because their art form is social and requires space for musicians to rehearse in.
During the early 60s, these artists were moving into the large lofts of what were formerly sweatshops in an area of Manhattan called Soho. Artists and musicians like Yoko Ono, Walter de Maria, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Morris, Joan Jonas, Ornette Coleman, Robert & Sylvia Whit- man, La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela, Henry Flynt, Tony Conrad, just to name a few. These lofts where not legal to live in at the time. No one in New York would have considered living there, for the hip place to be at the time was Greenwich Village. However, it must be said that these artists didn’t move to Soho because it was hip, they moved there because the rents were cheap!
Gradually, more and more artists discovered the charms of loft living, and by the start of the seventies, it was mostly artists living there. A city zoning clearance had been granted for those who could certify that they were artists to reside there. And it was still cheap! In 1970, I had a 1200 sq. foot loft in Soho, and it cost me every bit of $180 a month; this was a typical rent back then!
I had first moved into my Soho loft in 1970, the year I moved out of my parents’ apartment, which was a bit further uptown near Gramercy Park. But they might as well have been living on Mars compared to what life was like back then in Soho. I soon discovered that there were certain advantages to having so many artists living in the same neighborhood.
Composers like La Monte, Philip Glass and Steve Reich put on informal concerts to develop their pieces in these lofts, performing in essentially what was someone’s living room. A new kind of chamber music had been invented! I remember my girlfriend, a modern dancer who lived in the loft upstairs, taking me to my first loft concert. It was down on Centre Street in this humongous loft. The guy who lived there had a big black beard and looked like a biker, in fact, he was a biker. I was scared of him! I thought maybe it was La Monte, but then I realized it wasn’t. It was Phill Niblock in 1970, showing one of his minimalist films with music he had made, and he turned out to be just about the sweetest guy imaginable. We’ve been friends ever since that concert.
And that’s the whole point, really. One must remember that this was the era before the internet. These days, in 2014, I can find out what my buddies in Chicago, Il. or in Durham, N.C. are up to just by check- ing out Facebook. Before the 90s, this wasn’t possible. There wasn’t even email! So what we all did back then, we all moved into the same neighborhood.
We’d all check out each other’s work constantly. So let’s say, one night there would be an Yvonne Rainer dance event in someone’s loft. The next morning, I’d be out for breakfast at the local Puerto-Rican breakfast place on the corner of Prince Street and West Broadway, and there would be Phil Glass and Richard Serra discussing it, over breakfast! Or we’d go to one of the watering spots after the concert. Back then everyone went to the Spring Street Bar. But then when too many non-artists started showing up (to soak up the artist vibes) things moved to a bar a bit below Canal Street called Magoo’s. The walls were covered with paintings from Soho artists, who had used the paint- ings to pay their bar bills!
Guitar Trio at Metro Pictures Gallery / 1984 / Robert Longo, Wharton Tiers (drums), Rhys Chatham, Jules Baptiste, © Paula Court
I can’t begin to emphasize how important this social interaction was: to be able to see a performance and on the same night, or the morning after, to discuss it with one’s peers. It makes for a dynamic art community and the rapid development of various strains of thought.
Some video artist friends of mine had started a place called the Kitchen, located then on Mercer and Houston. Their names were Woody and Steina Vasulka. I had done some music for their videos. The idea of artists working with video had only just happened, soon joined by electronic image artists such as Nam June Paik, Bill and Louise Etra, Bill Viola, Kit Fitzgerald, John Sanbourn, and many others. Woody and Steina had started this place called the Kitchen, an artist-run venture, to show their stuff and the work of their friends. They wanted interesting music at their place, so they asked me if I could produce a concert series there. Soon we had a concert going every Monday night. That first year we had people playing there like Jon Gibson, Laurie Spiegel, Tony Conrad, Tom Johnson, Garrett List, Joan La Barbara, Frederick Rzewski, Eliane Radigue, La Monte Young, the list went on and on. It was exciting to be a part of all this.
A point that I wanted to make was that in order to have a vibrant art scene, one needs three essen- tial things: (1) above all, cheap rent; (2) writers, critics and journals to say something about the stuff that is happening, to get the word out; (3) public support (government grants) and/or private (Medici, de Menil, etc). We had those three things in Soho during the 70s, and it made the scene sizzling.
Eventually, the world at large got wind of what was happening in Soho, and then the professional classes started moving in, discovering that living in lofts was actually quite comfortable and pleasant. However, it had the unfortunate effect of making the property values go up. And soon many of us were moving further downtown to find cheaper rents. First we moved to Tribeca, an area in Manhattan south of Soho. Then that got too expensive, and by the 80s, we were all living in the East Village. I lived across the street from the Hell’s Angels on East 3rd Street. They kept the neighborhood safe, that’s for sure!
The early 70s saw a number of jazz lofts in the East Village such as Sam River’s Studio Rivbea presenting free jazz, and by the early 80s most of the downtown energy had moved to this area of Manhattan, with clubs like CBGBs showcasing the punk rock revolution of the late 70s, and later on, spaces that did performance, theater, music and film such as 8BC, the Pyramid Club and many others. The punk explosion had happened with groups like Patti Smith and Television, Richard Hell, the Ramones, Talking Heads, and later the “No Wave” people including Lydia Lunch, James Chance and the Contortions, Mars, DNA, and others. I had become part of this scene also. Soon we were joined by groups like Sonic Youth and Swans.
Picture from 1972 of (from right to left) Steina Vasulka (co-founder of the Kitchen), me, Woody Vasulka (the other co-founder) and Dimitri Deyatkin, a video curator there - Rhys
So... All this energy was focused at this point in the East Village. Why? You guessed it! Relatively cheap rents!
I had moved to France by the end of the 80s due to a romantic attachment to a person and to a country, and also due to a certain fondness for highly potent cheese. But I would come back to the East Village at least once a year to do a concert or whatever. I remember thinking during these visits as I walked east on St Mark’s Place, “This is my tribe! Why, oh why, did I ever leave?!?!”
But by the early nineties, I stopped feeling this. Rents had become so expensive in the East Village. A cool $1k for a one-room hole-in-the-wall, ouch! When I lived
in the East Village during the late 70s, my apartment cost $65 a month. During the 70s and 80s, concerts at CBGBS started really late, the first show wouldn’t start until 10.30pm. Why? Because no one had to get up to go to work the next day, that’s why! Rents were so cheap, everyone could support themselves with their 2 or 3-day a week bartender or waitress gig. It was great! But that all changed in the 90s. Suddenly, everyone had to go out and get a full time job to support their art.
I was sure the NY art scene would gradually die at that point. I figured the focus would move to other great urban centers with cheaper rent, places like Seattle, Chicago, Philly, Dallas, etc., and to a large extent, it did, thank god. But as far as New York was concerned, I was wrong about what happened. The music and art scene didn’t die there. It had moved... to Brooklyn.
Already by the late 80s, pioneering spirits were moving to the Greenpoint and Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn. Back then, people living in the East Village were kinda snobbish about it. It was like, if you didn’t live in the East Village, that meant you’re weren’t cool. While I understood the sentiment, I also knew from personal experience that it was getting too expensive for me to live in the Eat Village. My solution was to move to Paris, France. For a number of my friends, their solution was to move to Brooklyn.
So to close, I’d like to share an experience I had a couple of years ago with my 20- year old French daughter, Manon. She’s a guitarist, and we were in town to play in a piece I had written, entitled A Crimson Grail. We did it at the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. A Crimson Grail is a piece for 200 electric guitars and 16 electric basses. We were staying at a hotel in the neighborhood, but one day, I took Manon down to the East Village to show her where her mother and I used to hang out before she was born. I was shocked! It was all tourists on the street. The areas that had been formerly notorious scoring points and looked like DMZs all had expensive sushi shops and charming pocket parks. It was so embarrassing! Plus, to buy a pint cost $10 there!
Fortunately, a number of people from the Crimson band were playing their own music at a small club that night, I think it was Sarah Lipstate, William Tyler, David Daniell, and other friends. It was in Brooklyn. When Manon and I got out of the subway, I was amazed.
Rhys Chatham Band at Danceteria / 1982 / Thurston Moore, Tim Schellenbaum, Jonathan Kane, Rhys Chatham, Ned Sublette , © Paula Court
All over, on the street, were these cool looking people: people who actually looked in- teresting enough to talk to! To tell you the truth, the vibe was almost identical to Soho in the early 70s, except that it was perhaps more family oriented, somehow. More grandmothers on the street. I liked that! Later, I started playing with a band based
in Bushwick called Oneida. They have their rehearsal studio in an artist run co-op called Secret Project Robot. It’s a former garage, so it has a big room that serves as an exhibition space and concert hall, with other rooms that serve as studios and rehearsal spaces. I’ve been and played there a number of times now, and to be perfectly honest, it feels a bit like the Kitchen did in the early seventies. And SPR isn’t the only space like that in Brooklyn, there are bars doing interesting music like Union Pool, and artist-run venues like Monster Island, Zebulon, Silent Barn, to name a few.
All to say that history repeats itself. Society will always find a place to dream!
Does it have to be in Brooklyn, per se? Definitely not! There are centers like this all over the world these days, to be sure. We even have them here in expensive Paris!
I suppose the point I’m trying to make here is that while the internet is great for keeping us in touch with each other, to know what is going on, nothing substitutes for F2F contact. For as much as it is great and convenient to hear your favorite band on YouTube or in an mp3 format, or especially on the warm format of vinyl, nothing sub- stitutes for hearing them play live, at a venue near you... And hanging out with your friends and talking about it afterwards.