The Lower East Side now quartered and knighted by real estate brokers, as the “East Village” was similar to Babylon. Drugs, AIDS, prostitution, and crime governed the area south of 14th Street, west of the east river, north of Houston Street, and east of Bowery. The poor living conditions in tandem with dirt-cheap rent attracted artists and lefty non-artists. This terra firma inspired non-artists to be artists and artists to go beyond the two-dimensional and three-dimensional mediums to performance art, music and literature. Three students at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art have been inspired by this zeitgeist. Each of them explores and contextualizes various aspects of that period with a glimpse of the bittersweet coming of times.

Alex DeCarli’s panel of found objects is reminiscent of Candy Jernigan’s piece titled, “Found Dope Part II” made from collected crack vials and her self-explanatory installation, “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”. These objects are anthropological evidence of life in the “East Village” avant-gentrification. Instead of finding vials, pipes, needles, DeCarli gathered flattened cans, straws, cardboard, packing ribbons, scaffolding veneers, and scrap metal. He arranged his collection in groupings within cell-like structures. These remnants indicate gentrification’s inevitable construction of residential and commercial buildings. The polarizing effect of this New York City real estate phenomenon is displacement, community conflict coupled with lowered crime rates and upward mobility. DeCarli’s “Waste group # 1,” raises uncertainties on its benefit and detriment of neighborhoods.

The “East Village” in the 80s was an incubator for precocious lifestyles. People were analogous to moths to a flame because there was indeed something for everybody. David Wojnarowicz was an artist who met, slept with, strangled and breathed life into the misconceived “gay man’s disease”. Wojnarowicz’s poetry and artwork evoked poignant moments of human fragility, frustration and struggle. Joshua Caleb Weibley chose a phrase from Wojnarowicz’s book titled, “Close to the Knives: Memoir of Disintegration” as the focus for his piece. For viewers unfamiliar with his literature, this didactic word sequence sets out to remind us of the AIDS epidemic and a testament to Wojnarowicz’s transcendence. “Shrine” is a massive print that targets the viewer’s attention to an underlying absolution. Looking up at Weibley’s text based piece is a moment of reflection and a renewal of an appreciation for life.

The trepidation of that time rendered creativity. Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burrough’s experiences perpetually preserved their incantations in a mason jar for an unsuspected audience. All three writers produced semi-autobiographical books and poetry smeared with obscenities, satire and incongruous sentences. Sam Vernon’s ink drawings and wheatpastes tap into their accounts about the life of demographically marginalized groups facing the test for survival. Their seminal contributions thrust non-conformity and experimentation to a new high that complements their ill-managed vices. In effect, this audaciousness gives birth to a new species of intellects that tenaciously infect others to demand freedom from psychological repression. Vernon’s, “Strangers” portray the masses by a dense cloud made up of simplified figures representing rogue ideology.

Bygone artists from America’s Babylon posthumously continue to forge weapons that provoke contemporary artist’s perspective and approach. These academically multidisciplinary artists in particular, who are situated in the “East Village”, are asked to provide a contemporary definition for what is controversial and non-conformist. The challenge lies in supporting statements in consideration of countless conditions and limitations. The success of social programs such as Lower East Side Needle Exchange (clean syringes), Love Heals (diagnosed AIDS educators), and Cooper Square Committee (low income resident representation) are instrumental to the survival of the neighborhood. Paradoxically, these programs are evidence of the law of diminishing returns where social benefits outweigh cultural endeavors. Furthermore, this predicament proliferates the obscurity within the philosophy of art imitating life.