Exterior of Fashion/Moda with mural by Crash, 1982. Photo by Lisa Kahane
Uptown/Downtown: When Boroughs Collide (DEI Warriors on the Culture Front)
When: Monday, April 28 @ 3:00 - 6:00 PM
Where: Flamboyan Theater @ The Clemente
Roundtable Speakers: Lisa Kahane, Joe Lewis, Jane Dickson, Frank Morales, Betti-Sue Hertz, Libertad Guerra and Amy Starecheski.
Invited respondents: John Ahearn, Charlie Ahearn, John “Crash” Matos, Yasmin Ramirez
Organized by: ABC No Rio in partnership with Historias
Join us for a roundtable discussion Uptown/Downtown: When Boroughs Collide (DEI Warriors on the Culture Front), exploring ABC No Rio's history of collaboration with experimental cultural centers and the intersectionality that arose from artists moving between boroughs throughout the eighties. Photographer Lisa Kahane will complement the discussion with a slideshow presentation on Fashion Moda, a Bronx-based art space that served as a vital second home for many ABC No Rio-affiliated artists.
This event will focus on the history of Fashion Moda, an experimental art space in the South Bronx opened by Austrian emigre artist Stefan Eins in 1978. ABC No Rio opened two years later in Loisaida, after a building occupation. Several of the artists from “the Moda” came down for the Real Estate Show, and later showed at ABC. Artists from ABC went uptown to the Moda regularly. This crosstown traffic continued throughout the 1980s. One of the okupas of the squatting movement in the Bronx had a zine library; when that squat was evicted the zine library came to ABC No Rio, the seed of the present-day collection. This artistic traffic between boroughs was crucially important in laying the foundations for the diverse multi-cultural artworld of the present-day.
Questions around intersectionality have dogged the cultural world in NYC for at least a century.* The axis of Colab, through Fashion Moda and ABC No Rio, set out to intervene in this by siting experimental cultural centers in peripheral barrios of the city in the late 1970s and through the '80s. These centers welcomed artists of color. How did that work? And did it work to build the artworld of today? The question is especially urgent given the recent federal government's all-out attacks on "DEI" funding in all sectors. The time is now urgent for this important history to be better known.
Run of Events:
Time: 3PM to 4:15
*30 minute break
4:45 to 6PM
Reception afterwards
