“The Fun” Conference w/ Patricia Field and “The Fun: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC” Book Launch feat. DJ Paisley Dalton, Leo Gugu, Ladyfag, Susanne Bartsch, Frankie Sharp & More!!!
FRIDAY 8
New York comes alive after dark. For years the thriving nightlife has drawn curious outsiders to the city while uniting its residents in a utopian bacchanal that transcends racial, sexual, and class boundaries. As a catalyst for otherwise impossibly intimate intermingling in what is America’s cultural capital, nightlife in NYC has always been fertile ground for creative expression and exploration, birthing countless movements in music, fashion, and art. Yet it is only in the past decade that major cultural institutions have begun to recognize that nightlife promoters are artists, and the parties—the environments, performance, fashion, and experiences created—works of art.
Surveying the evolving nature of nightlife in New York City, THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC is a first-of-its-kind publication, documenting the new forms of nightlife practitioners to emerge since the turn of the millennium. Through profiles of over 30 artists, including the royalty of Manhattan nightlife like Susanne Bartsch and Ladyfag; hybrid forms like Xtapussy and FCKNLZ; the continuation of minimal wave and goth communities through Pendu Disco; and the vibrant queer scenes of JUDY, Frankie Sharp, and My Chiffon is Wet, THE FUN: The Social Practice of Nightlife in NYC documents the rich contemporary cultural activity keeping NYC as weird and innovative as decades past. Accompanying these profiles are essays by a range of voices in the nightlife, including artists Rob Roth, Genesis P-Orridge, and Michael Alig, curators and critics Claire Bishop, and Jake Yuzna, as well as journalist Michael Musto providing both historical context and contemporary understanding of nightlife as a vital artistic practice that has been marginalized by the arts sector for hundreds of years.
The Fun Conference
Please join us as award winning film and television costume designer, and nightlife icon Patricia Field ushers in THE FUN Conference 2013. For over four decades Field’s namesake Greenwich Village boutique has been a defining influence on the intersection of nightlife and fashion in New York. A pioneer in her own right, Field’s is emblematic of the diversity and originality in ever-evolving culture of nightlife production.
Following Ms. Field’s keynote address, a screening of 2012 FUN Fellows, FCKNLZ’s, project, “FCKNLZ on Broadway” will be staged. In November 2012, in celebration of Club Kid Herstory Month, FCKNLZ re-created the legendary appearances of 90s club kids on TV talk shows such as Donahue and Geraldo in front of a live studio audience in The Museum of Arts and Design Theater. Guests were invited to come dressed as their favorite club kids to participate in what manifested as part revivalist performance, part forward-facing analysis of the legacy of club kid protagonists.
Museum of Arts and Design, 2 Columbus Circle at Eighth Ave, NYC, 212-299-7777, 7pm, $12
