Douglas Crimp: DISSS-CO (A Fragment): From Before Pictures, A Memoir of 1970s New York

by Douglas Crimp

MoMA PS1 presents the fourth iteration of Greater New York . Recurring every five years, the exhibition has traditionally showcased the work of emerging artists living and working in the New York metropolitan area. Considering the “greater” aspect of its title in terms of both geography and time, Greater New York . begins roughly with the moment when MoMA PS1 was founded in 1976 as an alternative venue that took advantage of disused real estate, reaching back to artists who engaged the margins of the city.
In conjunction with the exhibition, MoMA PS1 is publishing a series of readers that will be released throughout the run of the exhibition. These short volumes revisit older histories of New York while also inviting speculation about its future, highlighting certain works in the exhibition and engaging a range of subjects including disco, performance anxiety, real estate and newly unearthed historical documents. The series features contributions from Fia Backström, Mark Beasley, Gregg Bordowitz, Susan Cianciolo, Douglas Crimp, Catherine Damman, David Grubbs, Angie Keefer, Aidan Koch, Glenn Ligon, Gordon Matta-Clark, Claudia Rankine, Collier Schorr, and Sukhdev Sandhu, concluding with a round-table conversation with exhibition curators Peter Eleey, Douglas Crimp, Thomas J. Lax and Mia Locks. The series is edited by Jocelyn Miller, Curatorial Associate, MoMA PS1.

36 pages, Paperback

Published March 22, 2016

About the author

Douglas Crimp (b. 1944) was an American writer, curator, and art historian. He was professor in art history at the University of Rochester.

Reviews

[Glen Helfand · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excerpt based on a fragment, this chapbook is also a memory piece. Crimp's notes of his disco nights, euphoric even for an intellectual, are heady and warm, somehow fitting that the book itself has a matte cover. It's about thinking vs feeling, or the ways in which the dance floor required letting go, not an easy thing for a critical theorist. It makes sense that he didn't develop his contemporaneous notes into a full-fledged essay back then--he didn't really want to destroy the magic. That was left to a hip-breaking accident at a roller disco, an injury that gave him time to write from a more intellectual perspective.

[Akiva ꙮ]

One of Sarah's faves