Von Cathy

Das ABC No Rio in der Lower East Side. Ein Gespräch mit Steven Englander.

Auf meiner New York Reise stand ein Projekt ganz weit oben auf der Liste: das ABC No Rio. Es ist seit über 25 Jahren fester Bestandteil der Lower East Side, auch wenn diese Freiheit immer wieder erkämpft werden musste. Das No Rio ist »center for arts and activism« und beherbergt neben Punk-und Hardcorekonzerten, politisch ausgerichtete Kunstausstellungen, eine der größten »zine libraries« der Ostküste, eine Druckerei und ein Computer Pool. Daneben gibt es regelmäßige Kunst-und Photokurse und die Gruppen von »Food not Bombs« und »Books for Prisoners« nutzen die Räumlichkeiten. Seit seiner Entstehung war das No Rio immer wieder von existenziellen Problemen bedroht. Es hat sich aber, im Gegensatz zu anderen Projekten, als einziges durchgewurstelt. Dies ist erstaunlich in einer Gegend, die seit den 1980ern ökonomische Metamorphosen durchmachte und nun einer der teuersten Gegenden in Manhattan ist. Die endgültigen Schließung konnte nur durch den Kauf des Hauses im Juni 2006 abgewendet werden. Doch nun wird über eine Million US-Dollar für die Renovierung benötigt.

Ich traf mich mit Steven Englander, der seit über 15 Jahren am No Rio tätig ist und es mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Freunden am Laufen hält. Über Geschichte, Aufbau, Finanzierung und Probleme des Zentrums, fragte ich Steven über eine Stunde lang aus.

Beatpunk Webzine (KC): The first question addresses the financial aspect of No Rio. You offer a lot of resources, but the admissions for concerts are low. How does No Rio funds all costs?

ABC No Rio (Steven): Well, first of all No Rio gets some money from the State of New York, New York State Council On The Arts, and now for the first time of the year we’re getting money from the city for programming exhibitions, from an agency called the Department of Cultural Affairs. In the early days of No Rio they did get some from the NEA, National Endowment for the Arts, which is from the federal government. But I actually don’t apply to it, because of political and cultural issues that happened in the United States in the late 1980s. There were serious limitations on how federal money can be used. You know I’m just not interested in pursuing this, and they’re focus is mostly on big institutions and supporting the arts, what is called »underserved areas«, »rural areas«. And we wouldn’t get a lot. And there are some obscenity related issues with the NEA, when it became part of the »Cultural Wars«. In the United States between 1986 and 1992, where the right-winged politicians basically used the arts and culture as a whipping boy, to wire up conservative and Christian parts of the population by pointing at some, what they thought would be extreme artworks. Artwork that dealt with gender issues and homoeroticism and stuff like that. I guess, internationally the most famous artist who got caught up with the NEA, was the late Robert Maplethorpe. The photographer, who actually has a really beautiful style but with its homoerotic gimmickry. And there were some museums that showed some of his work that received federal money. So, there was a huge publicity storm about that. The other organization that supports the humanities got totally taken over by the right wing. The National Endowment for the Humanities is still by right wing ideologs. The vice presidents wife, Cheney’s wife, was the head of the NEH.
So it was really used by right-winged politicians to stir up conservative parts of the United States against federal funding for the arts. Now you have to sign a pledge, that if you were to receive federal money, you wouldn’t be going for work they consider obscene. And I’m not going to do that sort of thing. So we got state money from the New York State Council on the Arts for a long time, and from the Department of Cultural Affairs. And we started doing that, because they were formed, how the Department of Cultural Affairs in NYC worked. In the past it used to be a very political process and you would need to lobby your politicians to get funding for your arts projects. And in some instances it makes sense for things to work that way, like if you doing social services or things like that. But it does become problematic when you have to lobby a politician to support your art. So they had gotten DCA money in the early years. In my involvement I’d never applied for because I thought it was inappropriate to get programming money for arts by having to lobby politicians. But they’re changing that. They’re making up the model that the state has, where you submit a proposal that judges down the artistic merits by a panel of experts in that field, so exhibitions are judged by expertises in visual arts. So we applied for the first time, so they changed the way it happens. So we got a little bit of money and we get it again this year, so we asked for more. We do get city funding and we’ve got state funding for a long time. I didn’t have any intention getting NEA money for arts programming here. There are actually people here who are starting to research transient government funding. By seeing what the government actually funds, you can correlate it to political changes, you can see how people are changing.

Are there any other projects that ABC No Rio collaborates with?

Informally you can say we are part of the informal network of political and cultural spaces in NY and across the country. Cause people found out about us from all over. But it’s an informal network. There is no sort of formal group of spaces at the margins of culture and politics like we have. And there have been a few times, where people tried to set them up, but it’s actually never really worked out that well. And even among just the arts, when they had an organization of small non-profit organizations that were set up by artist, the National Associations of Artists Organizations. That Organization didn’t survive that political onslaught that happened on the federal level. Even among art organizations that aren’t big institutions like museums, there is no association, where everybody joins in. Among the more marginal ones it’s the same thing. There are only loose networks, that aren’t formalized in any way, like a federation. There have been attempts that haven’t succeeded.

There are affiliated projects at No Rio like, the »Food not Bombs« group and »Books through Bars«

Yeah, they’re independent projects, that for years now we provided material support to and space. So »Food not Bombs« are here, they are doing on the second floor cooking. And »Books through Bars« don’t need our space anymore, they actually moved their operations to Brooklyn, but we still provide them material support, so people make them donations that pass through us, they still use us as their voice mail, as a mail drop. And some of the people that volunteer help »Books through Bars« and we sort of gave them a home. But »Books trough Bars« are independent, we call them »affiliated project«.

How many people are associated with ABC No Rio at the moment?

In terms of people who are involved in running everything, like the guys who run the computer centre, the volunteers who run the print shop, it’s probably 50 to 60, including the shows that go on. Parts of it are big though, there might be 15 or 20 people involved in making the punk shows happen. Some of them are small, like three people running the print shop, there are half a dozen people doing the darkroom, half a dozen people doing the computer centre, half a dozen people in the zine library. »Food not Bombs« is a rotating crew, hard to keep track on. There are about 5 poets who run the poetry readings and feature readings, there’s a couple of that who does the experimental series. There are about eight people who are running the Visual Arts Committee and they curate the exhibitions. I mean it goes up and down over the course of the year.

Is there a central plenary at No Rio?

Well, No Rio is a collective of collectives. Some of groups call themselves »sub collectives«. Like the punks. Fortunately or unfortunately, there are people who don’t like to go to meetings, but they like working on their projects, so stuff gets done, but sometimes there might only be four people at the monthly meeting. Ultimately to keep the place running it’s better off having people who like to work. But don’t like to go to meetings. But we do have the monthly meeting to address issues related to No Rio. For the most part it’s about fundraising, organizing benefits, meeting with the architect. Because we are non-profit we also got a Board of Directors, by law we have to have that. So there’s a view committees where are Board and volunteers together. And the Board is supposed to be a little bit more reserved and they’re supposed to looking after, they approve the budget for the whole thing. They’re supposed to have the big picture. And the collective does the day to day stuff.

How would you assess the interaction with the community? For example, how often is the zine library or the dark room frequented?

It sort of varies; the busiest place is the print shop, in terms of activity that goes on. A lot of people come in when it’s open, especially on Thursday. The darkroom is less frequented, cause there is fewer and fewer people doing photography as an mechanical process.

So, I think here the community is less geographically defined, the community is defined by values and aspirations that individuals share, regardless where they live in New York City. When I first started coming by No Rio twenty years ago, most of the people who did stuff here and who came here, lived in the neighbourhood. Now, few people who do stuff can afford to live in the neighbourhood. So it’s less geographically defined to the Lower East Side, the only exception is, the arts education stuff. We do classes in photography and primarily the young people, involved in those classes come from the neighbourhood. Cause we do the outreach to local schools, we sent to the art teachers in the schools information about our photography classes

I was wondering about why there is no radical left movement in the US, although there used to be incidents where radicals gather from time to time (like Seattle 1999). Further, there are hundreds of activists groups, anarchists, left groups, Marxists, grassroots activists and so on who are in tradition of a left in the US. But there is no broader movement.

Yeah, it really only happens during huge events. I mean it started happing again, because people are protesting the nominating conventions for both political parties and it was the same in the summer of 2004, when the Republican National Convention happened here in New York City. So there was a lot of organizing and relationships were made by people doing different projects, projects here in NY and outside of the city. It happened in a big way, but they never really seem to get solidified. On the personal level obviously, connections will be made but on an institutional level or organizational level it doesn’t seem to happened here in the US. Those networks don’t get institutionalized. They’re made, but they’re informal networks. And the media is so controlled by the corporations, that they don’t report on them. And it seems if a network emerges one year, they have to reinvent it the other, that´s how it seems to me, but I’m not on the inside organize. There is a transferring knowledge or transferring connections, but the US is more individualistic society in general than the European countries, and I think a lot has to do with that. It goes on, but nothing following is able to focus and carry the momentum to the next thing and that’s the difference. It’s like you have those sporadic incidents. You know that thing in Seattle… there were a few smaller things that happened after that and then it sort of diminished. And George Bush then got elected.

How would you assess the political, social and cultural situation in New York City since the beginning of the 1990s? How does city politics develop after the splitting up of all the squats and after the ‘gentrification’ process started?

Well, in No Rio’s case… No Rio’s weird, because we ended up with the city own building. So we had to work with the city. In sub cultural stuff, they don’t get institutionalized here in the US. It’s weird on the one hand No Rio wants to maintain a certain amount of underground credibility, and on the other hand you can’t. But I think, for other stuff like street artists and people doing graffiti, they have no need for that sort of institutionalization, we have to go through. And New York is so expensive, so fewer and fewer people can afford to live here. I know a bunch of people who moved to Mexico City or Berlin. So in the future, that’s probably the trend that is going on, there is no immediate solution. The real changes have less to do with who is in the mayor’s office, than the cost of real estate. But there are still a lot of young people coming to NY. But it was a lot easier when I was their age, rents were cheap and I only had to work half the time and I had lots of free time to do all sorts of projects. I think it got really more to do with the increasing cost of living in NY that is impacting what goes on culturally in the mainstream and within subcultures. The mayor we have right now, was elected in as a Republican, he’s a billionaire but is probably the more friendly to the arts mayor, that we’ve had in a long time and he supports a lot of public art, which isn’t sub cultural and he is dedicating more money to the arts. And a Republican in NY is different than a Republican in the southern parts of the United States, he’s still gotta be pretty liberal. He’s also pro-development which leads to less and less room for people who can afford to live here. Well you referred to the squats too and I mean right now there is probably a couple of squats up in the Bronx but the squatters movement is over in New York City. They went legal and some of us are getting old, I’m 46, we have children and at a certain point you want to stop worrying about.

So the city didn’t directly negotiate with the squatters, because they’ve a policy of not doing that. So there was a Third Party developer, that’s a non-profit organization that develops low-income housing and the city gave them the buildings. They develop them, what is called »low-income limited equity-co-ops«. So they have limited equity, what means you can’t sell them for market price. There where 12 squats in the neighbourhood and all twelve took part in this.

Is there a similar project like No Rio existing in New York?

There is nothing exactly like us with the degree of political engagement that we have. There are other arts centres and there are other political organizations, but most of the arts centres are less political then we are. They haven’t emerged out of the same situation. They haven’t merged out of subculture. They were mostly formed by artists. There is 16 Beaver and ad hoc in Williamsburg, that does a lot of graffiti and street art exhibitions. There is a place on long island city called the Flux factory. There are some punk spaces, but they don’t have all the other stuff that we do.

What does the term »political« or »being political« mean to you?

Here I tend to use »social engagement« and artist who actually deal with. Here ‘politics’, people tend to think of electoral politics. So we actually don’t get involved in politics in that way. Sometimes we take a stand on something, if somebody asks. ABC No Rio doesn’t take stands on particular issues, there is no political program that we espouse. And the range of people is too broad. I think one of the reasons that we survived all the years is because we don’t do that.

At our meetings we don’t necessarily arguing over political issues. People tend to describe No Rio as anarchist. But only because of the degree of spontaneity and informality that goes on that attracts people who are anarchist. But there are also people who vote and who are more ‘mainstream’.

I prefer »social engagement« for the kind of work we support. We don’t do a political litmus test. But a lot of art work we do is like in some respects politically connected. Like the exhibition we had last spring »Hidden«, which was about misrepresenting things. And sometimes we do more explicit shows, like the Street art exhibition from Oaxaca, Mexico. For me social engagement or political work means being involved.

What does the term »left« mean to you?

Here everybody would agree that they are on the left. But New York is the most liberal city in the country anyway. It’s hard to say, I think for myself and for the most people who are actively involved here it has to do with scepticism about the efficiency of free markets and the efficiency and ability of government to solve problems brought about by free market. So in a nutshell it’s that. In the United States it’s actually kind of weird because there are people who are like libertarians, who are in favour of the free market, who are also sceptical about governmental invention in other areas of people’s life. On some point at the extremes there is actually some cross pollination, but we don’t get too many right-wing anarchists or right-wing libertarians coming here. It’s actually about the anarchists and the socialists here. It’s been a long time since the US had functioning socialistic qualities and it is probably the era that people look back. Sort of romanticized vision from the United States of the 1950s, when we still had programs developed after the Great Depression, you know the New Deal, a lot of that stuff disappeared. Things my dad grew up with, when he was a kid. But even then it was nothing compared to what social programs the European Countries have for their citizens. So here the left would include people who would recognize that there is government solutions to problems inherent to the free market, and more anarchistic people are somewhat sceptical about that.

The United States is a really conservative place, so people who are Republican consider the Democrats to be the Leftists. But most Leftist don’t consider the Democrats to be Leftist. They recognize them being left to the Republicans on a continuum, but I don’t think they would say that they are Leftist. Within the Democratic Party there are some people, you could say they are Leftist. There is a guy named Barney Sanders, who’s actually a socialist and there was a guy from Minnesota, called Paul Wellstone. He was pretty far left. And if we would have an actual left party, he probably would have been part of it. But we don’t, so the people who have the capacity to bring in some left ideas, end up being the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party.

It’s a little bit different here. But I mean with the News and Letters group or any of the other, I call them the »alphabet soup of Marxist Leagues and Parties«, because there are dozens and dozens of them and they are tiny, they all do nothing. It’s not going to happen in the United States. They are not going to have their vanguard party and overthrow the government. I think right now among young people, for the most part, I think the most of those organizations like News and Letters, they are dying off in the next 20 or 30 years. But trying to talk about the »Left« in the United States is almost like trying to describe a cloud.

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