Nick Abrahams on the making of No Wave documentary 'No Age New York'

Editorial
5 Nov 2009

Image: Nick Abrahams, No Age New York, film still (Lydia Lunch)

Artist Nick Abrahams looks back at the making of No Age New York, his 1993 film on the No Wave scene. Watch No Age New York in our current No Wave online exhibition.

NO AGE NEW YORK

In retrospect, it was like a pilgrimage undertaken in good faith. Me and my friend Ana Cory Wright turned up in New York in the summer of 1992 hoping to grab some interviews with people in the downtown New York film scene, but with nothing concrete in place, and we went with the flow of who was around, who could see us, sleeping on couches and filming for a whole 2 weeks...

I had read a little about the No Wave film scene in various samizdat magazines. But I didn't get to see many of these films until I was in New York that summer. In essence, we made it up as we went along... This improvised approach does mean the film does not work as any sort of 'definitive history' of No Wave film - more like a tasting menu with some of the delights that are on offer if you looked beyond regular cinemas, and into art galleries, clubs and other alternative spaces. But it's a work of enthusiasm rather than technical merit, so please revel in the textures and contradictions, and forgive us our sins against film making.

The No Wave band scene was made up of fragmented groups of individuals as diverse as the styles of music they were playing. As far as this was paralleled in film making, the No Wave films seemed to share a love of transgression and trashiness, and be made (as our documentary was) on No Budget.

The scene had been connected to punk rock and clubs, with some musicians, such as John Spencer and John Lurie, making films, and others, such as Jim Foetus and Pat Place, acting in them. Maybe for a moment, roles were broken down, music venues became cinemas, and super 8 became the celluloid format du jour.

Back in '92 I had a very romantic image of the downtown art scene in New York. From across the Atlantic, I was aware of the ripples created by the No Wave scene many years before. Their sense of 'making a scene' was something I couldn't tap into in the London I had recently moved to, and where the closest I had found to an underground community were the circle of oddballs of all sexualities and interests that seemed to drift in and out of the orbit of Derek Jarman (including various relatives of Psychic TV, Andrew Logan's Alternative Miss World, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Act Up and ... gardeners).

The Film Co-op seemed rather heavy on the structural side of film at that time. Fed by my reading of too many badly written books about 1976 onwards, No Wave and Post Punk seemed, to me, to be very romantic, and I imagined a New York filled with serious men and women in black leather jackets taking their cues from Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar, Maya Deren, and Andy Warhol...

Magazines and fanzines which made their way to independent bookstores like Compendium Books in Camden such as early issues of Film Threat and the Underground Film Bulletin became the filmic equivalent to Sniffin' Glue to me. And much as that punk fanzine showed you three chords and then suggested 'now form a band', I thought that I would borrow a video camera and 'now make a film'.

By the nature of its fragmented making, 'No Age New York' itself is a haphazard collection of interviews, as the way we met people and the things we shot was very random. The first person I met was Lydia Lunch, who led to all the other people in one way or another.

She performed in films by Vivienne Dick, Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Beth B etc, and seems to have been the muse of No Wave. The video interviews are intercut with snippets of Super 8 footage I shot during that brief stay in New York. Again, this footage was an attempt to show how disconnected individuals could come together to form a 'scene'.

We met Michael Wilson, the tattooed man, at a party with Beth B, and he said he'd like to be in our little film (a lovely, shy man, he died in 1996, at the age of 44). And Joe Coleman pops up smoking a cigar whilst stomping around Manhattan. Everyone seemed to know Joe. This fortuitous meeting of people, hanging out and filming little clips seemed very much in keeping with the post punk ethos.

Nick Zedd, Beth B and Richard Kern certainly fall neatly into the 'No Wave filmmakers' history. Zedd in particular created a 'history' by writing about his own films and those of his friends under various assumed names, and defining a lot of them as 'the Cinema of Transgression'.

Alyce Wittenstein fits less easily into this canon, though her films star downtown 'superstars' such as Zedd and Taylor Mead, and deal with issues which concern everyone in big cities such as gentrification. Chris Kraus falls outside of the circle completely, although connected to downtown performers such as Penny Arcade, connecting more to the Semiotext/cultural theory axis in the New York arts community (although a bit obscure, her films are definitely worth seeking out}.

We did interview various other people, including community activist Clayton Patterson, film historian Jonas Mekas (i remember Nick Zedd getting very worked up about Mekas and calling him an 'Adolf Hitler of film making'), cultural theorist Sylvere Lotringer, artist Joe Coleman, and (my favourite) poet Emilio Cubeiro, amongst many others, but god knows where those tapes are now!

If Lydia Lunch was the No Wave muse, maybe the scene's godfather was Jack Smith. His name repeatedly seemed to crop up as he was an actor, film maker, troublemaker, and, as someone who was defiantly anti establishment right up til his death, something of a role model for many. His writings, films and way of life are gathering more acclaim, and there is a pretty decent fist of a documentary about him called 'Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis'.

I have heard of 2 films which are meant to be far more definitive - 'Llik your idols' (I understand it took 5 years to make as opposed to our 2 weeks!) and 'Blank City', both sound good, and there is a terrific book called 'Deathtripping' by the estimable Jack Sergeant.

Looking back, I have a lot of respect for these film makers who didn't mind a couple of youngsters from London turning up on their doorsteps demanding interviews about some films they had (in the main) finished many years before. So maybe the spirit of community and support had not disappeared completely, just changed its shape and mellowed, as we all tend to do over time. ..

Nick Abrahams is a London-based filmmaker. No Age New York is distributed by LUX. www.nicholasabrahams.com

Some links:

Nick Zedd
Richard Kern
Alyce Wittenstein
Chris Kraus
Beth B
Lydia Lunch
Jack Sergeant
'Blank City', a film by Celine Danhier
'Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis', a film by Mary Jordan