40 Years Later: The Greenwich Village Weathermen Explosion
Note: This post ran in a different form on March 6, 2009.
Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 years ago today…
a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or
b.) One of the others
Answer: a! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.
Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. I am not making this up.
A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.
A-Rad Show at MOMA! And a Month for DCQ…
When we started this humble little venture, they said it wouldn’t last. By “they” we mean one or two individuals who have since been Pinocheted, and by “last,” we assume they meant a month.
Yet here we are, honkies: Thirty days later, our deviant thoughts have infiltrated 28 states and 38 countries, and the Net still hasn’t banned us. Our sincere thanks to everyone out there for your ongoing support. Please help us continue to spread the word, and invite your homies to get down with us here and on Facebook.
Alright, enough wankin’ it — back to the show: Dunce Cap popped by MOMA the other day for the Ron Arad exhibition up in the penthouse. Billed by the museum as “the first major retrospective of Arad’s design work in the United States,” No Discipline revolved around the artist’s Cage sans Frontières, a gargantuan flowing mass of steel, reminiscent of Jeff Koons’ sculptural oeuvre, that housed most of the show’s other works (see below). Stacked on the interior and exterior walls of the Cage were an amalgam of pieces aptly representing the Israeli/British designer’s wildly diverse career: A fruit bowl propped alongside a design for Notify Jeans’ upcoming Milan showroom; a curvaceous chair next to a moving model of a rotating restaurant set atop an Alpen pinnacle (video here). Check out this neat Chris Ware-esque diagram for a pictorial overview.
Befitting Arad’s head-first embrace of new disciplines, the artist also incorporated an injection of our modern morphine (LOL!), inviting visitors to shoot text messages to his Swarovski-commissioned Lolita chandelier. More than 1,000 white LEDS transmitted the messages, which wound down the crystal-encrusted chandelier’s cylindrical ribbon, creating the illusion that the structure was spinning.
If you haven’t made it to the show yet, well, you’re SOL — it closed a week ago. As a dissimilar substitute, peep Stux Gallery’s On Love? On War?: Prominent Contemporary Chinese Artists, which features lots of T&A of varying appeal. The show closes in Chelsea on November 14th.
Puerto Rico Day 2009…
…was tight as always, albeit a little light on the underage freaking. So tight, in fact, that we’re gonna let it marinate for another day or two before attempting to describe it. In the meantime, Long Island City looked nice the other day (realtors: photography skills for hire — yes, it’s true, I’m still available):
We ventured across Newtown Creek for LIC Artists’ Open Studios and, in typical DCQ fashion, set aside enough time to visit the workspaces of three of the 150-plus participating artists. Converted old factories and warehouses on barren industrial blocks slicing through a neighborhood trending residential housed the studios…
…which held, along with paint-splattered daycare centers, rotting staircases and freight elevators, some nice stuff from relative unknowns:
Two Months Late and 94 Short
Detroit photographer Kevin Bauman has 100 Abandoned Houses (via Volts, Amps and Ohms). We have six. But we swear we shot these before his site blew up earlier this fine spring. Check the trees if you don’t believe us. Ha. Moted.
