Listening session at the Partisan café

SPACE AND BODY: NEW YORK 1975
with WORKING GROUP FOR SOUND IN THE EXPANDED FIELD
Tuesday 20.9
2PM-6PM

Space and Body is an exploration of connections between local underground dance music and popular music scenes, contemporaneous work (with sound) in the visual arts, and infrastructure. For the Partisan café, three datelines have been selected for daytime presentations of music, sound, writings, and (possibly) video: New York 1975, Sheffield 1980, and Chicago 1990.

Space and Body: New York 1975 focuses on the state of New York City on the brink of fiscal collapse. As information supplanted industry, warehouses and factories were emptied of labor, creating a temporary, artificial state of spatial boundlessness within New York. Within this real estate vacuum, opportunities arose for artists, art exhibitors, cultural organizations, and underground dance music clubs to work with large scale volumetric spaces and durational events, leading to a proliferation of live/work studios, alternative art spaces, and more. While this period’s end was marked by the rise of neoliberal real estate developments, the emergence of HIV and crack epidemics, and the dismantling of social welfare, it also produced templates for independently organized cultural spaces that have proliferated in post-industrial urban environments throughout the world.

A playlist featuring “Proto-Disco” tracks—music played for social dancing before corporate music publishers rebranded various strains of black and Latin popular music as mainstream Disco—will be played. Readings related to this time period will also be available, and additional materials might be provided. Space and Body: New York 1975 is organized by Kabir Carter, who will be on hand for informal discussions. As always, the Partisan café will provide coffee free of charge.