Conversation “Cleaning Up New York City in the 1960s and 1970s”
Graduate Center, CUNY, New York. In the context of The House of Dust exhibition at the James Gallery
October 19, 2016
Participants: Aleksei Grinenko, The Ph.D. Program in Theatre, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Gillian Sneed, The Ph.D. Program in Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY; Elizabeth L. Wollman, Music, Baruch College, CUNY.
How do private and public responses to what is perceived as filthy shape the geography of urban living? How do social and institutional solutions designed to address and manage the “problem” of filth interface with the city’s artistic capacity and production? Responding to these questions, Professor Elizabeth Wollman considered the cultural implications of obscenity laws for experimental and mainstream sites of performance during the period; Aleksei Grinenko read trash and “mental illness” on Broadway stages in dialogue with the realities of the city streets; and Gillian Sneed discussed local community resistance to the first iteration of Alison Knowles' The House of Dust in Chelsea for its challenge to tidy aesthetic norms. This event was a discussion of cultural encounters with material and metaphorical manifestations of filth and sanitation in 1960s-70s New York City.
To listen to the conversation: