Things Were Different Then
A Laboratory for Experimentation, Venice was a cultural stew of innovators and risk takers.
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SSB Celebrates 50 Years
SSB Celebrates 50 Years with an Oral History of the 70s Art Scene in LA
A Sonic Architecture of Experimental Performance and Sound
As an Igbo-American sound and video artist, kelechi’s work recalibrates, dismantles, and animates the conventions of performance spaces, culminating in amplifies it, doubles, trebles it.
Some Serious Business and Site Santa Fe Present: amplifies it, doubles, trebles it
kelechi agwuncha envisions and constructs a new framework for restaging sound artists through public activations—drawing on experimental spatial approaches found in genres like experimental music, disco, punk, and Jamaican dub
SSB and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Present “We Started a Nightclub”
Windy City residents take a deep dive into the birth of New York’s iconic Pyramid Cocktail Lounge
Save the Ugly Music Festival
SAVE THE UGLY MUSIC FESTIVAL, features music, raffles, murals, a clothing swap, games, and lots of other wacky, experimental art activities and people.
Incentivizing Humans to Think More Critically About Our Relationship With the Environment
Whether transforming textile waste into beautiful handmade paper and journals or walking across the US collecting litter and connecting with people and communities, Chauncey Foster, co-founder of We Grow Eco, is a visionary—facilitating interactive science, art, and community programs built upon small, unified actions that lead to habitual, social, and systemic change.
BOOK TALK: Village Preservation
July 25th Zoom Webinar: “We Started a Nightclub” with Susan Martin and Kestutis Nakas moderated by Yael Friedman and hosted by Village Preservation.
Finale of Lisa Mezzacappa and Beth Lisick’s “The Electronic Lover” Premieres
The finale of Lisa Mezzacappa and Beth Lisick’s audio opera set in chatrooms at the dawn of the internet airs on June 1st.
Pyramid People Podcasts
In honor of the publication of “We Started a Nightclub”: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It, co-author Kestutis Nakas talks with key players in the book who tell their stories recalling their friends and collaborators and the culture of the East Village in the early 80s.
Kenny Fries received the Creative Capital literature grant for his new book, In the Province of the Gods. He is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir, and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.
In SAFEWAY I heard a whining | Song. Dill fills the air with longing | What was the Twentieth Century | Appetite. I grew up wondering would I | Ever fuck like them, the dead. They left | Behind the lingering sense of an ethos:
I hate to begin with the big D—death—but there it is. My co-curator Bill Stelling’s brilliant title for the exhibition, taken from Robert Browning’s poem “Love Among the Ruins”, aptly describes the main themes—love and mortality—that were the impetus for this show. As I lost so many friends so suddenly and unexpectedly in…
SSB and Howl! Happening are delighted to present a snippet from Penny’s performance of Margo Howard-Howard below. The full performance, as well as a video of the infamous performance of Jackie Curtis’ Glamor, Glory, and Gold at 56 Bleecker Gallery will be featured in Love Among the Ruins. Performance artist Penny Arcade’s work has…
When Dean Rolston, co-owner of 56 Bleecker Gallery, died in 1994 from AIDS, he left behind a memoir—Remembering Dying—a memento mori of the last two years of his life. No hagiography: In this short, powerful, beautifully written, and honest work Dean looks at his life and imminent death through the prism of contemporary culture and…
Join Some Serious Business for Love Among the Ruins POETRY NOIR hosted by Maynard Monrow on September 28, 2017, 7pm at Howl Happening: An Arturo Vega Project. As the name implies, this evening turns on the dark side of creativity at the end of an era of partying and excess that is now the stuff of…
SSB is pleased to present a portfolio of photographs by Mark Sink. An intrepid chronicler of the antics and personalities that animated 56 Bleecker Gallery, his insightful portraits on view in the exhibition make a powerful statement about the energy and creativity of late 80s New York. A private art consultant, Sink represents and curates…
I knew I wanted to work with moths. Moths conjure up an image of nighttime, lights, creepiness, and they are food for bears. I am a big fan of mammals. In seeing the gallery space I saw options of darkening the room, creating a nighttime “moth feeding” and possibly including a two story tall bear over the stairwell landing who would be consuming the moths.
Some Serious Business presents #FiftyQuestions to highlight folks who are creating, presenting, questioning and critiquing. Each featured artist picks a handful of questions to answer. Laura Splan is an artist and lecturer whose work explores intersections of art, science, technology and craft. Her conceptually based projects examine the material manifestations of our mutable relationship with the…
Quintan Ana Wikswo interviews SSB Founding Director Susan Martin about her essay in The Dharma of Dogs, Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers. The Dharma of Dogs shares the reflections of spiritual teachers and writers who have found a source of deep truth and practical wisdom beneath the furry surface of our four-legged friends. (1) You…