CURATED BY 2 | ROBERT CARRITHERS & LOUIS ARMAND NEW YORK BERLIN PRAGUE | 3 PRAGUE 2017 Litteraria Pragensia Books www.litterariapragensia.com Selection © Robert Carrithers & Louis Armand, 2017 Introduction © Louis Armand, 2017 “City Primeval” song lyrics © Marcia Shofi eld & Phil Shoenfelt, 1982. The copyright of individual works remains with the authors; all images reproduced with permission. Published 2017 by Univerzita Karlova Filozofi cká Fakulta Litteraria Pragensia Books Centre for Critical & Cultural Theory, DALC Náměstí Jana Palacha 2 116 38 Praha 1, Czech Republic All rights reserved. This book is copyright under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the copyright holders. Requests to publish work from this book should be directed to the publishers. The research & publication of this book have been supported from the ‘Program rozvoje vědních oblastí na Univerzitě Karlově,’ no. 9: ‘Literature & Art in Intercultural Relationships,’ subproject: ‘Transformations of Cultural Histories of Anglophone Countries: Identities, Periods, Canons.’ Cataloguing in Publication Data CITY PRIMEVAL. NEW YORK, BERLIN, PRAGUE, curated by Robert Carrithers & Louis Armand. —1st ed. p. cm. 4 | ISBN 978-80-7308-726-5 1. Visual Culture. 2. Cultural Theory. 3. Urban Studies. I. Carrithers, Robert. II. Armand, Louis. III. Title Printed in the Czech Republic by Tigris Cover, typeset & design © lazarus Cover image: “Lola,” 2013, by Robert Carrithers Frontispiece: “Psychedelic Weekend” (Viva, Tom Scully, Michael Phillips, Wendy Wild, Rene Laigo, Rudi Protrudi, Deb O’Nair), East 6th Street, New York, 1981, by Robert Carrithers Endpage: John Sex & Wendy Wild for Screw magazine, 1982, by Robert Carrithers The curators wish to express their thanks to Ann Magnuson, Phil Shoenfelt, David Vichnar, Tim König, Gwendolyn Albert, Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein, Peter Milne/M33, Clare Wallace, Katarina Rakušček, Semra Sevin, Alena Minaříková, Kateřina Kasperová, Lenka Smažíková, Petr Hájek & Michael Carrithers. ITINERARY Introduction 115 Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité 9 REACTIONARY SENTIMENTALISM: Penny Arcade NEW YORK, BERLIN, PRAGUE Louis Armand 117 Marcia Resnick: An Appreciation Robert Carrithers NEW YORK 119 Downtown Lina Bertucci 53 Club 57 Robert Carrithers 127 Bad Part of Town Rudi Protrudi 67 Mudd in Your Eye Robert Carrithers 139 Breaking My Club 57 Cherry Dale Ashmun 75 Have a Good Evening, Mr Carrithers... Robert Carrithers 141 Midnight Textis Rudolf Piper 79 Collectors’ Items Tom Scully 149 Native View Bethany Eden Jacobson 85 Iconographs William Coupon 159 Šípková Růženka Roxanne Fontana | 5 87 You Don’t Have to Do Much to Cause Trouble These Days 165 The Storied Sight of Hubert Kretzschmar Interview with Lydia Lunch John Hood 95 NYC November 3rd 2013 171 Jean-Michel Basquiat Nick Zedd Michael Holman 96 Taylor Mead 173 Letters to Richard Kostelanetz Nick Zedd Steve Dalachinsky 99 The State of Cultural Journalism 176 My Underground New York Nick Zedd Henry Hills 101 The New Punk Girl 181 NYC Time Machine Victor Bockris Gary Ray Bugarcic 111 Knowing Nico 183 How I Ended Up on the Bowery… Jere Harshman Sara Driver 187 Fusionism 284 Ilse Ruppert: An Appreciation Shalom Neuman Robert Carrithers 192 GG 288 Sex, Drugs, Rock‘n’Roll Mykel Board Mona Mur 195 Living With Wildlife 293 The Night I Screamed Louder Julius Klein Than Alan Vega Ian Wright 201 Why I Miss Junkies Peter Nolan Smith 294 When I First Came To Berlin... Julia Murakami 209 One Night at Max’s Marcia Schofi eld 297 The Berlin Series Julia Murakami 213 Junkies on Surfboards Phil Shoenfelt 305 Into the Blue André Werner 219 The Magician Carl Haber 316 Berlin in Seven Penetrations Kenton Turk 223 10th Street Puma Perl 330 Crocuses Azalea So Sweet 225 Meanwhile on a Roof in Chinatown Ingrid Rudefors 335 Fatal Shore An Interview with Bruno Adams 231 The End of the Night Anthony Haden Guest 339 Once Upon A Time In Berlin Chris Hughes 234 Heart of Decadence Mark Steiner 6 | 342 Where Is It At? Gaby Bíla-Günther BERLIN 345 Datenverarbeitung Oliver Schütz 243 Fräulein Schroeder Robert Carrithers 349 The Drug Bucket Mona Mur 248 Berlin Scrapbook Robert Carrithers 353 Self-Portrait Myron Zownir 267 Berlin London & New York Bettina Köster 363 Falsifi ed Diaries 1970-2016 Carola Göllner 269 Torture Mark Reeder 377 In Western Berlin Nhoah Hoena 283 Years of Living Dangerously Christoph Dreher 381 The Science of Doubt 477 Prague Unplugged Steve Morell Glen Emery 388 House of Shame 485 The Circus of Sensuality J.Jackie Baier Christoph Brandl 396 Dissonance 494 Film Score Max Dax Interview with Varhan Orchestrovič Bauer 398 Refl ections 499 Tvorba Semra Sevin Jolana Izbicka 404 Only the Stupidest Dogs Shit 503 Prague Roots Where People Walk Šimon Šafránek Susanne Glück 507 Prague Dark Portrait 406 Timo Jacobs: An Appreciation Thor Garcia Robert Carrithers 510 Vision Goes Outward, Visions 407 My Berlin Philosophy Come Inward Timo Jacobs Vincent Farnsworth 512 Time Travel PRAGUE Honza Sakař 414 Icons Of The Prague ‘90s 521 It Eats You Robert Carrithers David Zijlstra 435 Radost FX 528 A Tram to Anděl Richard & Winter Zoli Rinat Magsumov 439 Synchronicities 529 May Date | 7 Michal Cihlář Rinat Magsumov 445 Ostblok 530 You Broke My Art! Mark Reeder Markéta Baňková 455 The Turn of the Screw 535 Street Interview with David Černý Antonio Cossa 458 Portraits 540 Freetekno Roman Černý Jaromír Lelek 473 Johnny’s Name Wasn’t Johnny 546 Life Imitates Art Tobiáš Jirous Paul Pacey 475 The Ring & the Yacht Tobiáš Jirous 548 CONTRIBUTORS 8 | “American Apparel,” 125th Street, New York, 2009, by Louis Armand. REACTIONARY SENTIMENTALISM: new york, berlin, Prague Louis Armand Metal city sunrise is grey coal dust in the air smudges of people… – Khmer Rouge, “City Primeval” He walked back into the living room, looking again at the illuminated photo of the man with the brown beard & long hair. “Who’s that, a friend of yours?” Mr Sweety glanced over. He said, “This picture here?” & sounded surprised. “It’s Jesus. Who you think it was?” “It’s a photograph,” Raymond said. Mr Sweety said, “Yeah, it’s a good likeness, ain’t it?” – Elmore Leonard, City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit Few cities in the world exercise such infl uence over the mind as to manifest that rebellious spirit, that genius loci, through which the intellectual vitalism of a given epoch is hannelled.c These places, galvanized in their very substance by a vortex of subcultural electricity, possess by their names alone powers of conjuration. Yet such are the enervations of contemporary Culture Industry nihilism that beyond the “No Future” wrought by instant branding, there is only this mystique of the mind’s geography, laid out like the pilgrimagesites of a dead imagination – whose museumed “transcendence” instructs us as to what’s already lost in any struggle to invent our present condition if we allow it to be divorced from an act of sabotage of all that is thus Holy. Equally, there’s a question of something crucial being at stake the instant we attach a coordinate to what William Blake called the “poetic genius”:this rebellious spirit, whenever & wherever it is conspicuous, exists by a wilful delinquency, like a political crime. | 9 possession of Saddam Hussein’s régime at the time NEW YORK of its invasion of Kuwait – including 47 infantry There are forms of obscurantism deliberately divisions augmented by 9 armoured & mechanised perpetrated by the forces of Tradition, by which divisions, numbering anywhere up to 600,000 even those facts that violently contradict it can men. The point of this was arguably to whitewash be expropriated at will to its discourse. In such the fact that the ensuing retaliatory “war” was, in circumstances Tradition reserves the right to proclaim reality, a turkey shoot (the infamous “highway itself “under attack,” imbuing its adversaries on the of death” of retreating conscripts). In 2003, by a political & cultural fringes with the most frightening logic of incrementation, imaginary “weapons of capacity to reduce all of civilisation to ruins unless mass destruction” were likewise evoked to give the (& always “against the odds” & with “great eff ort”) impression that Iraq, despite a decade of economic they are held in check if not outright negated. This blockades, continued to pose an imminent threat more than merely rhetorical manoeuvre has always to world peace, necessitating a second “war.” While assumed the paradoxical form of a “siege mentality” in 1989, by a regression of the same logic, all that combined with a will-to-pre-emptive-declaration- was required was the handle of a bullwhip, inserted of-“war”: war on terror, war on drugs, war on into the rectum of artist Robert Mapplethorpe poverty, war on unemployment, war on culture… & photographed in black & white, to cause US Before invading Iraq in 1990, the US & its 33 senators to envisage such clear & present danger allies circulated among the media long & detailed to the moral fi bre of the nation as to justify, on the inventories of military hardware said to be in the home front, a declaration of all-out “war” against creep of fascism, or even of the all-pervasiveness of the “spectacle”: the “false choices” represented by the Tradition & its discontents mean that alienation is the only possibility, so to speak, on off er. How then, other than by an act of conscience, to live, as Breton says, “in open confl ict with the immediate world that surrounds us”? An “ultrasophisticated world, a world which, no matter what aspect of it is put to the question, proves in the face of free thought to be without an alibi. In whatever direction I turn, there is in the function of this world the same appearance of cold & hostile irrationality, the same outer ceremony beneath which it is immediately obvious that the sign survives the thing signifi ed.” A certain reactionary sentimentalism attaches the National Endowment for the Arts (eff ectively itself to appropriations of this kind: we see it not deemed, in all but name, a terrorist organisation).