Osman Can Yerebakan (left) and Emily Colucci (right)
Photo by Ryan Leach
Installation is currently underway for La MaMa Galleria’s first exhibition of the fall, Party Out Of Bounds: Nightlife As Activism Since 1980. Opening this Friday, September 18, 2015, the show, organized with Visual AIDS, explores the connections between the AIDS pandemic and New York’s nightlife and artists. As pieces from the show’s 29 artists were arriving to the space, co-curators Emily Colucci and Osman Can Yerebakan spent a portion of their night discussing their curation process, the show’s generational aspect, and New York’s gentrification.
1. You’ve been working on
Party Out Of Bounds for quite some time. How and when did the project get
started?
Osman Can Yerebakan: Yes, when it opens
this week, Party Out Of Bounds will
be the result of a 2-year long project. We met at performance artist Ron
Athey’s automatic writing workshop at Participant Inc in the summer of 2013. We
share a certain perspective for art -- especially for the New York art scene --
and this led to submission of this proposal in the fall of 2013 to Visual AIDS’
annual curatorial call. Before that I started to contribute to Emily’s infamous
blog Filthy Dreams with my take on
various issues from art exhibitions to cronut mania. And here we are.
Emily Colucci: I’ve always been
inspired by nightlife, particularly the nightlife in Lower Manhattan in the
late 1970s and 1980s with performers such as John Sex, Ethyl Eichelberger, John
Kelly and Dean Johnson, as well as artists like Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz
and Cookie Mueller. At Participant Inc, we started talking about David
Wojnarowicz and that initial conversation led us to where we are now with the
show.
2. Have your astrological
signs been a good match for curating together?
O: I was
born on July 14th, and my sign is cancer. To be honest, I
am not sure what Emily’s sign is. I like to ask people what their astrological
sign is (I have a crab tattoo on my right arm as a reference to my sign), but
we never talked about it.
E: I’m an
Aries– a loud-mouthed, opinionated and annoyingly stubborn sign, which are all
qualities that Osman probably learned over the course of our two years curating
together.
3. With so many artists
involved across different generations, was it a very social curatorial
process?
O: Studio
visits and meeting with artists have been some of the most memorable parts of
this experience. As a curator, one gets exposure to so many different lives,
apartments, studios and stories that this component becomes a crucial source of
inspiration for the show, and this was definitely the case for this exhibition.
E: We
started our first conversations and studio visits in the summer of 2014 and
then just continued from there. With each studio visit, we were able to gain
access to these artists’ memories of the intersection of nightlife and activism
whether through ephemeral material they saved from clubs and bars or just
through–at times–hours long conversations.
4. New York has undergone a
lot of changes since 1980. Was that transition a factor in how you approached
the show's theme?
E: I don’t
think you could approach this show without recognizing the constant transitions
in New York’s cultural, nightlife and just physical landscape whether through
the HIV/AIDS pandemic or gentrification.
O: Gentrification
is a subtle yet definitely accentuated part of this exhibition. Bygone clubs,
bars or institutions are not only commemorated throughout the artworks on view,
but also they are studied as territories of political standpoint.
5. Do you think there’s a
generational shift in how artists are using their practices for activist
purposes? Who is the youngest artist in the show?
O: The youngest
artist is Kia Labeija who is in her mid-20s. Although Kia, like many artists in
this show and us the curators, did not witness the early days of the AIDS
pandemic, there is definitely a sense of unity and sharing of a mutual language
between younger and previous generations.
E:
Frankly, I don’t see a shift in how artists are using their practices. Rather,
there is an undeniable and powerful genealogy of art, activism and nightlife
that creates a dialogue between multiple generations of artists. Kia, for
example, is part of the House of LaBeija, one of the iconic houses in the ball
scene.
6. What does working at La
MaMa Galleria mean to you?
E:
Working with La MaMa Galleria has been fantastic. I’m honored to be a part of
the long and vibrant history of La MaMa through Party Out Of Bounds. As I said before, the cultural scene in
Downtown Manhattan has been a source of inspiration for me for years and La
MaMa is certainly an essential piece of that history.
O: Matt,
Sam and the whole La MaMa staff have been incredibly helpful throughout this
journey. We first met Matt and later Sam, and they both have managed to
handle our heavy email traffic. We can’t wait to experience the future of La
MaMa Galleria together.
in association with Visual AIDS
presents
PARTY OUT
OF BOUNDS:
NIGHTLIFE AS
ACTIVISM SINCE 1980
OF BOUNDS:
NIGHTLIFE AS
ACTIVISM SINCE 1980
September 18 - 10, 2015
Wednesday - Sunday 1pm - 7pm
La MaMa Galleria
47 Great Jones Street
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