Lights, Words, Noise: Family Pops Up in NYC

Good event alert! If you haven’t already been, this week is your final chance to check out the Thirty Days NY pop-up bookstore in Tribeca, put on by LA independent bookstore Family. (Earlier, the New Yorker Book Bench blog did a great–and dauntingly comprehensive–post about the month long event.)

I attended this past Saturday’s event with my roommate. Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo made guitar noise; Gary Panter did psychedelic lights. It was great. At certain points in the performance Alan Licht hung his guitar from a rope tied to one of the water pipes attached to the ceiling; he would bend down to tinker with his pedals, rise up, strum the guitar some, allow it to feedback, bend back over to tinker.

After they were done, the performers received enthusiastic applause from the crowd of around a hundred people.  A lot of people stayed to talk and several little boys with shaggy hair rode around the space on skateboards. Prominent comic book artists and musicians were sighted. Beautifully produced zines and art books stocked the displays; illustrations and photographs on the walls; a sculpture of a horse by Meryl Smith; DVD’s of Frownland by Ronald Bernstein; book objects by North Drive Press, Ryan McGinley, David Shrigley, Trinie Dalton and Wells Tower, to name a few.

My roommate and I found ourselves backstage for a minute (we had been directed by Panter to go see how everything was done). The props included various filters and gels for lighting, wire, cellophane, reflective emergency blankets, pieces of fabric with sequins on them and various other shiny, vaguely metallic things.

“It’s like a reflective puppet show,” explained one of the stagehands.

Thursday, May 6th, is the closing night. Brooklyn-based video and performance artist Shana Moulton and LA-based noise rockers Lucky Dragons will be accompanied by Gary Panter and Joshua White who will be doing the lights.

Photograph by Alison Kuo.