little nyc dispatch

books, galleries, various misc activities

Writing this fresh off my flight to London from NYC on a total of two hours sleep, so please forgive any upcoming grammatical errors and wording oddities that will have inevitably burrowed their way into this. Overnight flights sometimes feel like a sweet temporal trick I can play on myself. On a flight from Delhi to London a few years ago I watched When Harry Met Sally at five in the morning and it seemed totally acceptable.

Anyway, despite my sleeplessness I am recklessly awake this morning so I thought it would be nice to share some bits and pieces from the few weeks I just spent stateside. My time felt like eating a juicy, perfectly sweet strawberry, the kind you’re hoping for every time you buy a punnet but actually only really get once in a while. I went with two main goals: research for my master’s thesis, and to shoot a documentary, my first proper foray into filmmaking (!)

Along the way I also visited many amazing shows and bookshops and met lots of cool and lovely people. This serves as a (limited! or I’ll ramble!) highlights/suggested things to do if you’re in the city this summer, part record part recommendation.

The Allen Ginsberg Centennial @ The Poetry Project

This first one is not a recommendation because it cannot be recreated, but I truly wish it could be! Friends, colleagues, students, admirers of Allen gathered in St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery for the Poetry Project’s celebration of what would have been his hundredth birthday. To have been a fly on the wall for a few hours in this room has transformed how his poetry feels and sounds to me.

I wish I'd taken more photos of the event!

My Modern Art Foundry visit

Including this in the list is really just a plug for my Substack that I wrote about this last week >:)

The Millennium Film Workshop in Bushwick

The team at Millennium were the first interviewees for my documentary, and gave me such a warm welcome to their space. Joe and Preston showed me some of their ongoing archival work, and Joe fired up their Steinbeck editing desk for me which was a real treat! Later in the week I ran out of MiniDV tapes and was able to swing by last minute to buy some more for a very good price from these guys: NYC based filmmakers, go to them for all your audiovisual needs. I also watched Chantal Ackerman’s classic film News From Home at the Anthology Film Archives that evening, which Joe informed me was filmed on equipment hired from Anthology!

I look forward to sharing more about the documentary soon <3 when I review all of my footage a task which is looming over me <3

Sovereign Acts III at the James Gallery

This is my second time visiting the James Gallery at the CUNY Graduate Centre, the first of which led to this conversation with artist Jenny Perlin, so it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of their programming.

At the moment, they’re showing Sovereign Acts III, the third rendition of a series which explores “the relationship between performance, identity and contemporary Indigenous art.” It has a stellar selection of pieces, and I particularly loved Kent Monkman’s work with Christopher Chapman and Jackie Shawn, in which he takes on an alter ego to recreate period photographs of Aboriginal peoples.

Trains Bookshop & book shopping in general

I entered New York with four books and left with nine (!) + countless pieces of printed ephemera. Given that I move out of my flat in two months and leave England in three, I am really supposed to be downsizing, so this is perhaps short-sighted. Mega book sale incoming, keep your eyes peeled.

I wish I could say that this is everything I've brought back. It's really not.

Unfortunately there is really nowhere to buy books like New York, particularly second hand books. I was also constantly being given ephemera by galleries and archives I visited, so really that’s not my fault! A lot of my shopping happened at a sidewalk sale organised by Trains that my friend Rainer invited me to. Shoutout also to Village Works, leaves, Alabaster Bookshop, Printed Matter, East Village Books, Spoonbill & Sugartown. None of these are at all new recs but they are all really that good. Trains specifically is an apartment bookshop with a truly exceptional selection of critical theory (appointment only!) I would also recommend checking out Leo de Goede’s collection over on Instagram: he’s a painter with a formidable selection of art books, the selling of which he tells me is slowly taking over his life. Take those books off his hands!

Also, if you have a spare $10,000 to hand, there is a beautiful inscribed copy of Audre Lorde’s Cables to rage at Alabaster Bookshop. I’ve been told there’s been a few inquiries but no serious bids yet. Yours for the right price.

If you ask nicely they will also let you have a look even if you don't have $10,000 to spare :)

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This is a only a small smattering of the things that I spent my time doing, but the sleeplessness is now starting to hit and I’m running out of steam. This weekend I’m heading to Paris, so please send your recs!