Page 49 - Studio International - November 1967

NEWYORK

commentary by Dore Ashton

Electric Circus; experimental exhibitions
at Architectural League of New York;
Center for Inter-American Relations;
drawings from the Stieglitz Collection
at the Metropolitan

My neighbourhood is where it's at.
What is now known as the East Village used to
be a heterogeneous working class neighbourhood,
peopled with sober Ukrainians, voluble Italians,
industrious Jews and a scattering of Puerto Ricans.
They are all still here, but not nearly as conspicu-
ously as the young people variously called hippies,
flower people and drop-outs. They throng the
streets, particularly St Mark's Place, jangling their
ankle bells and making the Ukrainians-those very
tidy people-wince at the disorder of it all.
This neighbourhood is well supplied with psyche-
delic boutiques and whimsical little stores selling
(at rather high prices) Art Nouveau note paper and
the latest posters from San Francisco's famed Fill-
more Auditorium. It is also well supplied with pot,
and psychedelic accessories, and quite good book
stores. As I said, this is where it's at. But what is
`it' ? For a New Yorker writer I heard recently, 'it'
is all a 'put-on'. For a poet in his late thirties,
known not only for his vernacular verse but also
his fine translations from Provençal, 'it' is the
place where new poets can be heard, and mimeo-
graphed poetry magazines find an avid audience.
For a very young radical who thinks of himself as
an anarchist, 'it' is a part of the city where real
rebellion is brewing, and where dissent is the rule
rather than the exception. For the rest of us, 'it' is
the same old heterogeneous, chronically dirty,
colourful and inexpensive milieu where life still
spills out on the streets and there are no glass
canyons-yet. 'An electronic ultra media environment-the Electric Circus in New York
`It' is also becoming a chic place to go, where up-
town limousines are often parked while their
owners taste the stimuli offered by the newest place electronic sounds, live rock 'n roll music and to function in a brave new world, but becomes just
of entertainment-since Leary stopped performing mechanical squeaks and screeches. It is draped a heightened old-world pleasure not too different
in our neighbourhood-known as the ELECTRIC like a circus tent, and filled with slide projections, from the street fair circuses that delighted Kandin-
CIRCUS. strobe lights, black lights and maybe even old- sky, Max Jacob, Picasso and Leger, to name a few.
The Electric Circus was founded by two enter- fashioned Klieg lights. It has elaborate control In fact, there is a distinct element of nostalgia
prising youngish men who had come to the con- rooms and serious young people manning them, quite out of keeping with the management's ambi-
clusion that, as the press release goes, 'a whole and a management that is cleaning up without tion to 'reflect the mood and the pace of the times
generation of young people having grown up in a even selling alcoholic beverages. we live in'. There are the short straight costumes
computerized, McLuhanesque society, could no Its customers range from young Turks of the of the 1920s, and the flickering effects produced by
longer tolerate the more prosaic nightclub and psychedelic movement to tired lawyers and their strobe light-effects out of silent films. And there
theatrical offerings being made available to them'. jaded wives seeking the frisson nouveau. They all is the circus itself, revived yet again as a source of
They dreamed up 'an electronic ultra media en- submit to the magnified noise and painfully flicker- pleasure.
vironment ...where people were what mattered, ing strobe lights cheerfully. But when the acts The 'multimedia' efforts in general are most
where they could play games, dress as they like, come on-rather mediocre conventional circus acts adaptable to commercial and transitory ends. The
dance, sit, think, tune in and turn on'. -the management relents: the senses are permitted Scott Paper Company, it is reported, has increased
I don't know how much the people really matter, to focus just as they always have on the main event its sales by 11 per cent by imbuing salesmen with
but the rest of the description is fairly accurate. by means of the spotlight. Folks gather around and the Scott message, 'not by means of standard song
The Electric Circus is a large hall, booming with watch, and the great barrage to the senses ceases and dance industrial show, but with the aid of rock