Punk as F*ck: Anarchy in the NYT
Last summer, I saw an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum entitled “Grafitti,” a collection of twenty pieces of public art that had moved from the streets to the gallery. Gazing at the larger than life canvasses, I couldn’t help but sense that something was off. The visuals were stunning, but the meaning was lost, the style was amateur, and the tagging came off as mere self-indulgence. To conflate matters, visitors could even look at a “virtual gallery” of graf on the museum’s website. There’s a compelling argument to be made that grafitti art represents a cry for representation in a very specific contex. Once it becomes bought and sold and placed in Soho living rooms, it’s lost its relevancy.
Or, maybe it’s not be so simple. The most underground relic of them all—the anarchist house—has been documented in a new book by lifetime art collectiver Abby Banks. The book, a collection of photographs called “Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy” was written about today in the most erudite of sources, The New York Times. Hmmm.
As Philadelphia is a city with a westerly anarchist bent, it would be interesting to hear a local perspective on the commercialization of the punkhouse. Will it have to reinvent itself in order to escape a fate of obsolesence?
Jeffrey Hill in Washington, D.C. on Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 11:03am
Before I comment, I want to just throw it out there that I’ve never been punk. I listen to Television, Talking Heads and Sonic Youth - that’s the closest I ever got to CBGBs. That club is trash now.
I think the punkhouses need to stay away from people like Abby Banks. They come from wealthy neighborhoods and hipster-educated families. They romanticize the punk image. It’s not about the music, or even the idea… it’s about the image. It’s about a book. Anarchists don’t sell books for 20 dollars on Amazon.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is anything that punk or the houses can do to escape obsolesence because that specific scene is pretty much gone. The original punks are in their 50s now and the image of the punk has been turned into pop culture and sold. Punk is hip in the NY Times’ home and garden section. It’s the slippery silk language of New York culture that oozes off the tongues of downtown art critics and photographers. I think the Village Voice still has that “We Invented the Underground” award perched somewhere in the office, it’s right next to the stack of sprawling Radiohead reviews. I hear each new staffer is required to adore Kid A.
The idea lives on. It’s just something else now. I just hate to see it burn out this way… in art museums and on coffee tables. Bleh.
——-
tmchale on Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 1:56pm
The crusty we-don’t-shower punk scene in West Philly is still kickin it.
Jeffrey Hill in Washington, D.C. on Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 2:24pm
I’d like to see a book of “Punkbathrooms.”
abby on Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 1:35am
hey, i’m not a life time art collector. um,sorry. i do love alot of art. and music. i host bands weekly at an all ages donation only space. mostly local bands play here.
i work in a pet head stone factory (you can call my boss if you you think i’m fibbing) in north west mass and help support the art collective that i helped to start and have my studio in. and draw pictures, and make small objects of air drying clay. i took photo’s of punk houses all over the usa with my friend tim and told everyone i met that i wanted to make a book. it took a few years and alot of work, and it happened. its a beautiful document. punk houses will always keep goung. this book is for people in the book and people that will see it and maybe inspired to drop out.
peace, love,
abby
The Next American City on Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 10:50am
Abby: Let the record show that I, the not-so-punk-as-fuck editor of TNAC, changed Hayley’s post to say “collector” rather than “collectiver” during a round of late night editing. My mistake.
Hayley Richardson on Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 11:51am
Abby: It’s my sense that if the primary objective of the punk house is to struggle against the brutish forces of capitalism, then indeed something is lost in the production of a book such as yours. But if these houses are about providing an unparalleled quality of life for their members, then I’ll toast to their continued success, crusty bathrooms and all. -H
yossariandave on Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 12:51pm
What is punk? Is it a culture is it a movement or both? Obviously it is both but I believe the future of punk will be dependent upon how punks perceive it. If it is merely a form of “underground” culture it leaves itself to be exploited by a more socially dominant grouping. If it is a movement that seeks to affect change, by example or otherwise, I think more social flexibility can be accorded to it.
Something to maybe illustrate this….I was in the bookstore at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Art Museum here in DC and what do I find but a How to book on DIY means of “letting your voice be heard”. Is this maybe an aspect of the punk aesthetic worth mainstreaming?
Jeffrey Hill in Washington, D.C. on Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 1:54pm
I think it is important to be specific. The particular punk/anarchist movement in NYC was the product of a specific time and environment. It was rooted in the trashy, crime-ridden filth of the late 70s. Disco and coke was the “cosmo” thing to do, unemployment was high, the country was recovering from Vietnam… Put all that together in cities like NYC, D.C., L.A. and you got your counter-culture.
The retrospective of the anarchist punk movement is presented in this book as a collection of kitsch. If the punks were happy with being in a book to be sold in retailers and reviewed in The NY Times, power to ‘em. If the punk aesthetic was made to be mainstreamed - than the joke was on us.
robotronik on Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 5:50pm
I have lived in punk houses for the last 7 years of my life and I consider myself an anarchist. I am not sure if anyone who has yet responded can identify as such…so perhaps I am adding a new perspective here?
To put it simply, I am excited to see Abby’s book. I work at a radical bookstore and I requested that we order it. From the images I saw in the NYT, it looks like she has captured what makes a punk house unique and beautiful (at times).
I don’t feel like this book will bring the downfall of the punk house by exposing it to a mainstream audience. The punk house is a product of a crack in our society’s fabric that will continue to exist, whether it becomes a household word or not.
There are a lot of punk and anarchist books sold at Amazon and a lot that aren’t. What of it? What defines a movement has nothing to do with where related products are sold. In addition, keeping ideas and lifestyles underground is also not my preferred way of introducing others to new ideas that might benefit them. It’s not a club. We want new “members.” As Abby said, perhaps it will inspire others to find a life outside of “the box.”
cory on Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 5:15am
I have to agree with the last sentiment by Robotronik. I have spent the last 15 years or so of my life going to shows in punk houses, have lived in a few punk houses, and grew up out of them. Punk is actually in need of “new members” all the time, because people drop out of the scene for many reasons—they lose touch with their friends, they get a job and lose their community, etc. The punk house is basically the only thing that keeps us all together. We have to keep the tradition going.
In the 1990s when I grew up, there were plenty of punk houses where I lived in Seattle. When most of them fell apart due to rising expenses, we moved elsewhere. I moved into a studio apartment and lived by myself. It was basically a very bad alternative to living in a punk house since I didn’t have the community or the cheap rent. And I ate worse than when I was eating yummy food cooked by people getting free veggies out of the garbage. Instead, I ate spaghetti and ramen all the time.
Whatever you call the “punk house” it needs to still be kept alive, and whatever we do to keep it alive is necessary, even if that takes a coffee table book that some kid sees. The idea of the punk house isn’t so much an aspect of the music itself, but the community that it offers for both the residents and the community of travelers and other city residents. If parents and other people unacquainted with punk are compelled to talk to punks and treat punks in a more intelligent fashion, that’s even better.
melissa in philadelphia on Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 11:13am
wow.
many of my friend’s faces and houses were in that book and id like to set the record straight that abby is not MTV wrecking a puritanical movement set on salvation from capitalism.
I and my roommates don’t pick this option because its cheap or easy but because we are inspired by some shared core value; call it intentional community, “democratic” process, punk, marxist socialism, whatever it is called is the least important thing.
with punk in the title, its easy to misread. a loaded word that’s been bought and sold so many times over, a dead horse, no holiness to defend.
the book focuses on a specific and small sub-cultural group, one that has famously fought “the man”, yet large scale publishing seems inherently natural. you have to get past that irrelevant word, into understanding the ideology. these houses floors and couches are there for travelling friends of friends of friends and bands from far away. the kitchens are used for food-not-bombs and group meals. the shows often welcome the neighborhood homeless folks and wanderers, local teenager and their parents, whoever would like to come. the food and house goods are collective and that works because there is a sense of community.
while the public from the right to the left would like to claim they are truely democratic, romanticizing these concepts, we all recognize most people dont actually live out their ‘morals’ when given options. where i live in west Philadelphia and all over the world, by necessity generally, people live in extended and flexible family units. ally’s book highlights a group which has generally made a choice; those faces are those of generally white middle class backgrounds, privilege, and education…. and i guess thats the romantic idea in it, its an INTENTIONAL community. it has an intention. a powerful one.
while styles and words (like punk) are appropriated, becoming commodity and empty symbols, tombstones of a lost ideology, the ideas held in what is documented here is bigger then that. did you see any bullet belts or mohawks? heck no. the aesthetics of it all were pretty non-descript. its about capturing the ideal beyond the prescriptive symbol, and no one that lives by an ideal would want to prevent it from being understood, viewed, or practiced.
much in the way that you read or write for this magazine because you believe in urbanism, communities, the interconnectedness in quality of life, collective concerns,.... these things only grow stronger with press and awareness. and this is what disturbs me about this crit: it is not abby’s book, but you, who is walking in as an outsider, holding ideas of elitism and purity while objectifying an ideal, disarming it by romanticizing while missing the actual content.