Uptown/Downtown: When Boroughs Collide DEI Warriors on the Culture Front

Monday, April 28th from 3:00 - 6:00 PM
The Clemente, 107 Suffolk St, 4th Floor

Austrian emigre artist Stefan Eins opened the Fashion Moda experimental art space in the South Bronx 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.
 

Slide presentation about Fashion Moda by Lisa Kahane (confirmed). Presentations and round table discussion – invitees include: Joe Lewis, Lisa Kahane, Jane Dickson, John Ahearn, Charlie Ahearn, John “Crash” Matos, Frank Morales, Yasmin Ramirez, and Betti-Sue Hertz, Libertad Guerra, Amy Starecheski