With all of this Occupy Wall Street crap going on in New York it’s hard not to think about the state of the city in the 1980s. While there are a lot of similarities between the issues plaguing the youth of today and those who had to suffer though what was probably the shittiest decade ever, Generation X definitely had it worse. Not only were a lot of them jobless, they also didn’t have a future. So while we march around protesting student loan debt, corruption on Wall Street, and not being able to afford health care, they were squatting in post-apocalyptic buildings in Alphabet City, worrying about AIDS, numbing the pain with drugs, and saying “Fuck it, I’m going to make something.” It was this mentality that helped spawn a number of influential movements, like the underground film collective Cinema of Transgression, which is how the world was first introduced to the work of our good friend Richard Kern. As it happens, Richard is in a group show tonight at Bullet Space, which is in that very same once-sketchy neighborhood.
The gallery on 3rd St. in Manhattan was one of a slew of squatter-owned establishments that gave a voice to all of the pissed off punks in the mid-80s. Named after the brand of heroin that was sold on the block during that time, the space was a pillar of fortitude for all the lost creeps who didn’t know what to do besides make crazy shit to look at or listen to. Tonight they are having an opening for an exhibition called “Mob” that was curated by Alexandra Rojas and features Richard, as well as some other people we love like Leo Fitzpatrick, Martynka Wawrzyniak, and Lizzi Bougatsos from Gang Gang Dance.
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I can assure you this will be better than anything else going on tonight on the now yuppie-infested streets of downtown Manhattan, so check it out.
Bullet Space
292 E. 3rd St.
New York, NY
11/18
6-9
