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| NYC Underground Art: This is Your Last Resort |
Where’s the New York underground scene these days?
Asking that question is a little like catching shooting stars with a fishing net: they will always slip through your fingers and lead you on a wild dance across the night.
While it’s hard to keep up with the latest, hippest, coolest venues in New York, it sure is fun trying. If you’re in the mood to catch a fleeting glimpse of the “underground today, mainstream tomorrow” thrill, step into the world of New York City underground art, film and culture with me, and trace a path through some places that will inspire you to unveil your own inner freak.
New York Art Underground: LMCC
The art world long ago headed south from the Chelsea galleries to the heart of the financial district in Lower Manhattan. The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is an extraordinary organisation that facilitates the use of empty spaces by artists, creating a shifting stage for some of the most interesting, avant garde work you will see in the city. LMCC is also responsible for Swing Space, a program that connects artists and arts organizations with vacant commercial space downtown. Constantly moving and acquiring new sites, in the past Swing Spaces have included empty office floors, closed retail stores, an abandoned printing factory, a former bank. You never know where you will find art in this underground side of the Financial District, or it indeed, where it will find you.
You can also experience the art of Lower Manhattan with three self-guided audio walking tours, which explore the meaning, reception and context of public art through themed tours that focus on art and security, art and the body, monuments and memory.
Celebrate the Hack at Eyebeam
A side-trip to midtown Manhattan, Eyebeam is an art and technology center for the digital underground. It’s a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists meet and create contemporary digital artworks. Eyebeam celebrates the hack, encourages collaboration, freely offers its contributions to the community, and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution. Programs include ‘Open City’ – a glimpse into the current media and tactics of artists who take their practices into the street.
You Like to Dance, Drink, Weep?
If you like to dance, drink and weep to the authentic music of authentic Gypsy cultures, head to the 3rd New York Gypsy Festival. The Luminescent Orchestrii promise Romanian gypsy melodies, punk frenzy, salty tangos, hard rocking klezmer, haunting Balkan harmony, hip-hop beats and Appalachian fiddle, all eaten and spit out by three violins, resophonic guitar, bullhorn harmonica and guitarron. Dance up a storm with Baba Zula, The New York Gypsy All Stars Band, Balkan Beat Box and 17 Hippies, with the second part of the festival taking place in November.
The Underground Comes to You
New York’s Free 103.9FM is a fantastic community radio station and network. Tune in and listen up to their local and international transmission events for a sense of where the underground is heading next. Case in point: Damian Catera performing “Strategies Against Communication: The Semiotics of The Headless Dachshund,” playing live from his Jersey City studio for the Tremor 4 Festival.
Tremor_4 is a multi-location performedia festival that will occur in each artist’s present location (running November 8-11). The event is temporally specific, rather than specific to a particular physical or virtual location. Jump in and experience the underground wherever you are!
Green Point is the New Prague
Williamsburg was the ‘cool’ Lower East Side a while ago. But those who are now too underground to afford the rent hikes have moved to Green Point. Here my favourite diner in the world — Enid’s — continues to dispense Southern hash-and-greens brunches to the hipster kids who probably had a late night at punk-rock venue Warsaw rockin’ with the underground (bands like Sleater-Kinnery, The Sonics, Matisyahu, Pere Ubu, the Donnas) in the old Polish National Home…
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| Astoria’s Freeze Peach cafe, photo by Joey |
Astoria is the New Black
Staying on the ‘other’ side of the East River, take a trip to Astoria, where the underground vibe is really happening these days. You could start with the Astoria film meet-up group, for indie, classic, cult and documentary films screenings. Drop by the Tell Astorya Café, 3705 28th Ave Astoria, a small, cozy café with a laid back, down to earth vibe where people read, knit and meet for films, poetry, open mic and even a jazz brunch on Sunday.
Or try Flux Factory, billed as ‘a not for profit arts organization supporting innovation in things’, and has a genuinely underground approach to creating and producing the exhibitions and events that take place. The upcoming show “New York New York New York” lists an open call for artists, saying ‘We want artists not to think so much about New York as it actually is, but New York as a possible space. We encourage participants to explore the city’s great myths and urban legends, grandiose unrealized projects, future visions from the past, as well as individual and personal experiences of the city.’
Astoria’s Last Resort Art Space is a loft apartment with a rooftop patio, where the residents throw house parties featuring bands and DJs. Be respectful when you visit the underground at home, relax, and enjoy the cool live music they bring to Astoria.
Freeze Peach is an independent café with a wonderful selection of tea. The Freeze Peach mission states their desire to ‘Awaken senses through delight’ and ‘Facilitate random interaction’. Perfect for creating a new underground of artistic ferment, which could include an exhibition of photography by a local artist and café barista, and events including meetings for vinyl enthusiasts, a book swap, Astorians for peace, healing music open mic, a blog, and the very productive Astoria crafty knitty.
Socrates Sculpture Park was once an abandoned landfill and illegal dumpsite along the river, until a coalition of artists and community members re-discovered it in 1986, transforming the site into a new art centre. It has an open studio and exhibition space for artists and a neighborhood park where you can stroll through the art and enjoy the fresh air.
Underground New York, Taken Literally
The New York City Subway was built with the notion that art and architecture could appeal to many not just an elite, and that beautiful structures would inspire civic virtue. Whether or not this idea holds true, the subway is filled with hidden treasures. The philosophical movement ‘The City Beautiful’ is revived by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority program ‘Arts for Transit’, which aims to fill the subway with art, sculpture and mosaics, including a bronze alligator emerging from beneath the platform at 14th St station. Listen to the story by Margot Adler on NPR.
Finally, for those who prefer armchair travel, relax and enjoy tales from the city’s netherworlds with New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City by Julia Solis. Her fascination with urban exploration has led to years of traversing the subterranean landscapes of New York, and she tells wonderful stories about the crumbling aqueducts, underground speakeasies and ruins of insane asylums in these dark passages. Her work continues with Ars Subterranea, the society for creative preservation, encouraging an intersection between art and architectural relics in the New York City, and provoking audiences to interact with the city’s neglected and ruinous locations by recreating obscure but fascinating aspects of its urban development.
For more ideas in NYC, check out Viator’s list of things to do in New York City, from Broadway shows to Manhattan helicopter tours… and everything in between.
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