Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong were hired by me to work at Danceteria #1; Their job was to shoot the bands that played on the performance floor up to the video lounge. The video lounge was a concept that I came up with after playing with the video installation at my first successful club HURRAH. There it had been installed by Jane Friedman and Henry Schissler but only as ambient lighting above the dance floor.
When I opened Danceteria, I knew I wanted to make better use of the medium. I asked Emily to program video from their Nightclubbing documentation of bands mostly at CBGB’s (this is why I hired them ..it was a perfect fan/punk sensibility ). They did as asked and mixed in some kitsch.They were under strict orders NOT to take the video of the live bands out of the club They were told they did not own them I was strict about this because of my feeling about artist rights, I never negotiated an agreement with any artist I booked for the use of any live performance video other than for broadcast inside the club. Emily and Pat, in fact, stole the videos and monetized them …NYU’s Fales Library, for example, paid then $50,000 for their archive. One day Pat Ivers came into the club and started screaming that I had stolen their video library, I had not. Later I suspected they had squirreled then out of the club the night before and took them home; I felt terrible they were missing. She carried on like a bereft Mama Llama. Funny story now, but at the time it was not.
About five years later I was in LA and had gone to Long Beach to see a musician friend for lunch with my friend Craig Lee former member of Catholic Discipline (w/ Phranc) and at the time Music Editor of the LA Weekly. After lunch, Craig said let’s go to the Long Beach Museum they have a music video installation that I want to see. So off we went. It was Emily and Pat’s amateur capture of musicians entitled Nightclubbing.Much of it was the “stolen” documentation of Danceteria live performances. I remember feeling glad that they existed and pissed they pulled the stunt they did to cover up their stealing them. They have made all kinds of wild allegations about how they conceptualized a video lounge in nightclubs.
NYU’s Marvin Taylor did not verify their claim to have conceived the video lounge. I remember well asking Rudolf to go to goodwill and asking him to get some cheap couches and tables and old TV to be used as monitors. He agreed but when it was time to do it in construction instead he gave Emily and Pat $500 and the use of a truck to find furniture for the video lounge. They did and under his supervision made the installation of the video lounge. That is what they did .. not conceptualizing but decorating and installing the video monitors. Thet did a good job. But their claim to conceiving the video lounge robs me of my cultural legacy. When we opened Danceteria 2 on 21st Street, I decide to improve the concept. I wanted to showcase the video art emerging from the downtown art world. I hired Kit Fitgerald and John Sanborn who were a part of that emerging scene and gave them the title of Danceteria Video Lounge CURATORS. The live performace broadcast was still an essential part. But in their role of curators, they world premiere work by then unknown video artist that are now part of Museum shows around the world It was part of my concept of ART ATTACK. We went from kitsch to fine art Emily and Pat have never forgiven me. In fact, my name was removed from all materials/posters in their tacky NYU installation they did in an attempt to recreate the original video lounge from Danceteria 1. Today I am of course glad that musical performances I book are now archival fact despite t
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