Για την Ελληνική Εκδοχή

Thursday 8 December 2022 // 19:00pm (EET) – online

ZOOM LINK

The point of departure for this online discussion is the emergence of the punk-rock scene in NYC in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a period of rising social tensions, economic recession, and disaffection. The New York Spanner, one of the starting points for the Tyvek Project, was an artists’ periodical that was published by Colab (Collaborative Projects Inc.), an eclectic artists’ collective that countered the rise of conservatism and the widening gap between museums, galleries, and artist-run spaces. The early work of artists like Kim Gordon, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Kathy Acker appeared in the pages of the New York Spanner.

The pun-rock scene gained its momentum through oppositional practices, and experimented with the boundaries of the permissible, the subcultural and the marginal. Subsequently, several figures of this underground sence found their place in more mainstream cultural contexts, urban and visual cultures.

Ryan D. Purcell currently teaches U.S. cultural and intellectual history at Sarah Lawrence College while completing an NEH-funded fellowship to design and implement a new American Studies program at Montclair State University. His book project, entitled Sounds of the City Collapsing (under contract with Columbia University Press), examines New York City’s punk rock movement as it coalesced among performance venues within so-called “welfare hotels” in the 1970s. His writing on popular culture has appeared in various publications, and he currently serves as a historical advisor on multiple public-facing projects including a PBS documentary series called “Scene City,” as well as various historical commemorations at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Elena Koumarianou holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where she currently studies as an MA student in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This conversation is organised in collaboration with Lydia Panagou. Lydia has completed her studies at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in the Department of History and Theory of Art.  She is a member of the Athens Art Book Fair team, as well as an active member of Fade Radio, an independent, community-oriented platform based in Athens.