The rise and fall of Wild Brooklyn: A critical analysis Pt. 1 of 2
His false teeth gritted, oak grinding against oak (as the old wives tale goes) as Lieutenant General Washington of the Continental Army, unified under the banner of the newly christened United States of America attempted to whisk his army away in the middle of a sweltering August night, wading through the muck and the slough of the Gowanus Canal. Here in the southwest tip of Long Island, between the villages of Brooklyn and Flatbush.
Washington attempted to evacuate what was left of his ten thousand of troops from the wrath of the redcoats and their cutthroat Hessian mercenaries. Nearly three hundred killed, another thousand wounded or missing, and outnumbered nearly three to one, the tall, commanding General knew that if they fell to the musket and bayonet here, just across from the City of New York, then Jefferson’s brilliant Declaration of Independence would fall to the annals of failed, over-ambitious revolutionary text. A practical leader, Washington whisked his men away to the island of Manhattan under the cloak of night, a wise retreat that ensured that they would fight and win another day.
The Old Stone House (a recreation of it, actually) where Washington and his troops held off the onslaught of enemy troops still stands in Brooklyn, though it’s not in the wild, uncultivated mess that it was in 1776. It’s in Park Slope, one of the safest, most beautiful and rapidly prospering neighborhoods in New York, a veritable brownstone utopia. With the miraculous infusion of arts culture into DUMBO (complete with irresistibly cute, Real-Estate friendly title) and the emergence of Red Hook as a coveted historic waterfront space, Brooklyn’s reputation has become cleaner, safer and friendlier than it possibly ever has before.
And not everybody’s happy about that.
Development equals higher rent. It’s an irrefutable Catch-22 of urban living: Making a space better makes it more desirable, which makes it more expensive. And often those who feel they played an inseparable role in cultivating the area’s appeal (the artistic communities, the nightlife pioneers) feel left out of the progress when they see their rents quintuple.
Then again, how is that any different that any other land conflict in the world? Can any group really ever lay an intrinsic claim to a piece of land? Even the Native Americans crossed the Bearing Straight to get here ages ago. The Middle-East conflict is the clearest indication that the whole idea of “our land” does more harm than good, and if I were being booted from my home, I’d rather it be at the end of a checkbook than a rifle.
The claim to Brooklyn shifted from the Lenape to the Dutch, to the British, to The Colonials long before it then shattered into an international mélange of neighborhoods, Polish in Greenpoint, Hasidim in Boro Park, Italians in Bensonhurst, so on and so forth but Brooklynites one and all.
On April 15th, 230 years after Washington’s daring escape, The art/activism/thought collective, self-titled “Complacent Nation” echoed the good general’s struggle and announced through the power of email, their own Battle for Brooklyn, laying claim to a sacred land like so many leaders have in battles past. Of course, This wasn’t the first time that Complacent Nation stuck up a cause for the struggling artist, the non-capitalist, the striving idealist searching for nothing more than a space for expression without being muscled out by the forces of either the “law” or the market.
Complacent Nation is not a collective so much as a brainchild of a single organizer with a plethora other artists and performers who gravitate around it, involving themselves on a project-by-project basis. The “man behind the curtain to whom we are to pay no attention…” is Will Etundi. A 27 year-old web designer who works exclusively for non-profits. He moved to New York from Northern California eight years ago, living in Harlem for the first seven and then to DUMBO.
Will began Complacent a six years ago, as a comment on the disconnect between the social awareness and applied efforts of activist culture and the carelessness and complacency of the greater world around us. Understandable, seeing how this was the year we saw our president chosen by a single Supreme Court vote, while we sat watching, our thumbs mysteriously all planted deep within our rectal cavities. Reclaiming the streets was one of the roots of Will’s activism, seeing it as the most basic arena for populist thought and activity. (And no, it was not simply a hoard of young white people shouting: “WHOSE STREETS? . . .”Ah, you know the rest.) The idea of street-party-as-protest was one that held enormous appeal and potential, and one that Will and his collaborators planned to apply often.
The first Complacent party hosted in that fatefully tragic month of November, 2000 was titled Feel, focusing on full sensory awareness. (Not unlike the touch caves often found in science museums.) People were treated to alcoholic beverage taste-tests, and led through tunnels covered in various smooth, soft, and scratchy surfaces. The admission to the party was $7, in one dollar bills. My assumption was because the actual counting seven individual bills was an important corporeal process that we don’t think about often enough. Will had greater plans for those bills. They weren’t used to pay for the space, or the booze, and it definitely didn’t go into anyone’s pockets. Well, not quite yet.
Instead, on the morning after Thanksgiving, (the traditional Biggest Shopping Day of the Year and annual Buy Nothing Day for the anti-capitalist community) a mysterious figure in a suit and a mask (mimicking the familiar smiley-face logo, except with a straight line for a mouth) climbed atop a lamppost in Herald Square, in front of the biggest department store in the world…and began tossing the bills from a giant plastic garbage bag into the streets.
The pandemonium that ensued was expected, and it was only exacerbated when the people scrambling in the streets scraped up the dollar bills only to see stamped on one side of the bill in big red letters: SATISFIED? The man in the suit and mask (Will Etundi, of course,) was prompted arrested and spent a night in jail for disorderly conduct. A small price to play to place your name on the map of anti-consumerist culture, the crowds and the onlookers saw the face bearing neither a smile nor a frown. And pretty soon, the underground community knew the name Complacent. Their next party had nine-hundred attendees. This time around the money collected was put to the purpose of holding more events, maintaining www.complacent.org and, of course, stickers. Lots and lots of stickers.
Complacent became Complacent Nation in 2005, an effort to take it above and beyond just an event-by-event basis, with a regular email list broken down into three tiers: Aesthetics for art exhibits, Sedition for activism and protests, and Decadence of course, for parties. It was a clear well organized breakdown for everything that Complacent stood for. But it wasn’t just Complacent anymore. Now it was Complacent Nation, and the message therein was quite clear: “This Nation is fucked. What the hell is wrong with everyone?”
Well, as any arrogant prick will tell you (Full disclosure: I am an arrogant prick) it’s lonely at the top. Proclaiming oneself as righteous and everyone else just ignorantly content may not be the best way to get people behind your objective. We’ve seen some disturbing times since 2000, and starting with one sorrowful stolen election, things have been getting progressively worse, while many Americans are either in a car, at a desk, or on a couch. Sitting fat on their asses any way you slice it.
Things are bad, but when you start with fatalism, where do you go from there?
It seems like that’s been a question that Complacent has been contemplating itself for some time. And if you want to keep people involved, you can’t hang an all ominous cloud of doom over them the whole time you’re doing it. For this reason it seems, the focal point of Complacent events seem to be leaning more and more toward the decadent and aesthetic and less toward the seditious. As creators expand upon their own aspirations, the realization must be made that in this town, young people will always be more drawn to parties than petitions. Which doesn’t always meld with the causes and ideologies that led to this strongly titled condemnation of a country that just doesn’t care. The result is a heavily flawed message that has seemed to linger beneath the text of each of the Complacent emails:
“We can make progressive change in the world, if only we party hard enough…”
Not really the same as Washington’s great ambition, but I don’t think Will was drawing an allusion to the Battle OF Brooklyn (1776), no the name of the party was the Battle FOR Brooklyn as epic email proclamation explained:
“This is a call to arms?” Hmm? Is this La Revolucion, maybe?
“There are things worth fighting for. Have you noticed? Brooklyn is slipping. The storefronts are getting cleaner.” My first reaction was a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me? Are we fighting for dirty storefronts now?” And what exactly did it mean by Brooklyn is slipping? From who? Toward what?
The cultish sermon continued: “Because when we look for excitement, we want feverish teetering on the brink of mania; we want to step over that edge in a way we will never return from. On this night Brooklyn is a metaphor for the grit that we miss.” I considered writing an email back with a lengthy treatise on how artist infusion into industrial and blue-collar neighborhoods has always been (at least in New York) the first step toward an influx of investment and developers. From the Village, to SoHo, to LES, and finally to Williamsburg, is it any wonder that Bushwick would be next, even quicker than the last? One of the most obvious indicators being massive bacchanalias, which will always attract the attention of industry types and well-monied thrill-seekers. I decided to go with the opposite approach:
“You want ‘feverish teetering on the brink of mania? You want the ‘grit’ of ‘Wild Brooklyn’? Go smoke crack and stand out in East New York at 3 in the morning.” But, you know. I was still going to attend…
Washington attempted to evacuate what was left of his ten thousand of troops from the wrath of the redcoats and their cutthroat Hessian mercenaries. Nearly three hundred killed, another thousand wounded or missing, and outnumbered nearly three to one, the tall, commanding General knew that if they fell to the musket and bayonet here, just across from the City of New York, then Jefferson’s brilliant Declaration of Independence would fall to the annals of failed, over-ambitious revolutionary text. A practical leader, Washington whisked his men away to the island of Manhattan under the cloak of night, a wise retreat that ensured that they would fight and win another day.
The Old Stone House (a recreation of it, actually) where Washington and his troops held off the onslaught of enemy troops still stands in Brooklyn, though it’s not in the wild, uncultivated mess that it was in 1776. It’s in Park Slope, one of the safest, most beautiful and rapidly prospering neighborhoods in New York, a veritable brownstone utopia. With the miraculous infusion of arts culture into DUMBO (complete with irresistibly cute, Real-Estate friendly title) and the emergence of Red Hook as a coveted historic waterfront space, Brooklyn’s reputation has become cleaner, safer and friendlier than it possibly ever has before.
And not everybody’s happy about that.
Development equals higher rent. It’s an irrefutable Catch-22 of urban living: Making a space better makes it more desirable, which makes it more expensive. And often those who feel they played an inseparable role in cultivating the area’s appeal (the artistic communities, the nightlife pioneers) feel left out of the progress when they see their rents quintuple.
Then again, how is that any different that any other land conflict in the world? Can any group really ever lay an intrinsic claim to a piece of land? Even the Native Americans crossed the Bearing Straight to get here ages ago. The Middle-East conflict is the clearest indication that the whole idea of “our land” does more harm than good, and if I were being booted from my home, I’d rather it be at the end of a checkbook than a rifle.
The claim to Brooklyn shifted from the Lenape to the Dutch, to the British, to The Colonials long before it then shattered into an international mélange of neighborhoods, Polish in Greenpoint, Hasidim in Boro Park, Italians in Bensonhurst, so on and so forth but Brooklynites one and all.
On April 15th, 230 years after Washington’s daring escape, The art/activism/thought collective, self-titled “Complacent Nation” echoed the good general’s struggle and announced through the power of email, their own Battle for Brooklyn, laying claim to a sacred land like so many leaders have in battles past. Of course, This wasn’t the first time that Complacent Nation stuck up a cause for the struggling artist, the non-capitalist, the striving idealist searching for nothing more than a space for expression without being muscled out by the forces of either the “law” or the market.
Complacent Nation is not a collective so much as a brainchild of a single organizer with a plethora other artists and performers who gravitate around it, involving themselves on a project-by-project basis. The “man behind the curtain to whom we are to pay no attention…” is Will Etundi. A 27 year-old web designer who works exclusively for non-profits. He moved to New York from Northern California eight years ago, living in Harlem for the first seven and then to DUMBO.
Will began Complacent a six years ago, as a comment on the disconnect between the social awareness and applied efforts of activist culture and the carelessness and complacency of the greater world around us. Understandable, seeing how this was the year we saw our president chosen by a single Supreme Court vote, while we sat watching, our thumbs mysteriously all planted deep within our rectal cavities. Reclaiming the streets was one of the roots of Will’s activism, seeing it as the most basic arena for populist thought and activity. (And no, it was not simply a hoard of young white people shouting: “WHOSE STREETS? . . .”Ah, you know the rest.) The idea of street-party-as-protest was one that held enormous appeal and potential, and one that Will and his collaborators planned to apply often.
The first Complacent party hosted in that fatefully tragic month of November, 2000 was titled Feel, focusing on full sensory awareness. (Not unlike the touch caves often found in science museums.) People were treated to alcoholic beverage taste-tests, and led through tunnels covered in various smooth, soft, and scratchy surfaces. The admission to the party was $7, in one dollar bills. My assumption was because the actual counting seven individual bills was an important corporeal process that we don’t think about often enough. Will had greater plans for those bills. They weren’t used to pay for the space, or the booze, and it definitely didn’t go into anyone’s pockets. Well, not quite yet.
Instead, on the morning after Thanksgiving, (the traditional Biggest Shopping Day of the Year and annual Buy Nothing Day for the anti-capitalist community) a mysterious figure in a suit and a mask (mimicking the familiar smiley-face logo, except with a straight line for a mouth) climbed atop a lamppost in Herald Square, in front of the biggest department store in the world…and began tossing the bills from a giant plastic garbage bag into the streets.
The pandemonium that ensued was expected, and it was only exacerbated when the people scrambling in the streets scraped up the dollar bills only to see stamped on one side of the bill in big red letters: SATISFIED? The man in the suit and mask (Will Etundi, of course,) was prompted arrested and spent a night in jail for disorderly conduct. A small price to play to place your name on the map of anti-consumerist culture, the crowds and the onlookers saw the face bearing neither a smile nor a frown. And pretty soon, the underground community knew the name Complacent. Their next party had nine-hundred attendees. This time around the money collected was put to the purpose of holding more events, maintaining www.complacent.org and, of course, stickers. Lots and lots of stickers.
Complacent became Complacent Nation in 2005, an effort to take it above and beyond just an event-by-event basis, with a regular email list broken down into three tiers: Aesthetics for art exhibits, Sedition for activism and protests, and Decadence of course, for parties. It was a clear well organized breakdown for everything that Complacent stood for. But it wasn’t just Complacent anymore. Now it was Complacent Nation, and the message therein was quite clear: “This Nation is fucked. What the hell is wrong with everyone?”
Well, as any arrogant prick will tell you (Full disclosure: I am an arrogant prick) it’s lonely at the top. Proclaiming oneself as righteous and everyone else just ignorantly content may not be the best way to get people behind your objective. We’ve seen some disturbing times since 2000, and starting with one sorrowful stolen election, things have been getting progressively worse, while many Americans are either in a car, at a desk, or on a couch. Sitting fat on their asses any way you slice it.
Things are bad, but when you start with fatalism, where do you go from there?
It seems like that’s been a question that Complacent has been contemplating itself for some time. And if you want to keep people involved, you can’t hang an all ominous cloud of doom over them the whole time you’re doing it. For this reason it seems, the focal point of Complacent events seem to be leaning more and more toward the decadent and aesthetic and less toward the seditious. As creators expand upon their own aspirations, the realization must be made that in this town, young people will always be more drawn to parties than petitions. Which doesn’t always meld with the causes and ideologies that led to this strongly titled condemnation of a country that just doesn’t care. The result is a heavily flawed message that has seemed to linger beneath the text of each of the Complacent emails:
“We can make progressive change in the world, if only we party hard enough…”
Not really the same as Washington’s great ambition, but I don’t think Will was drawing an allusion to the Battle OF Brooklyn (1776), no the name of the party was the Battle FOR Brooklyn as epic email proclamation explained:
“This is a call to arms?” Hmm? Is this La Revolucion, maybe?
“There are things worth fighting for. Have you noticed? Brooklyn is slipping. The storefronts are getting cleaner.” My first reaction was a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me? Are we fighting for dirty storefronts now?” And what exactly did it mean by Brooklyn is slipping? From who? Toward what?
The cultish sermon continued: “Because when we look for excitement, we want feverish teetering on the brink of mania; we want to step over that edge in a way we will never return from. On this night Brooklyn is a metaphor for the grit that we miss.” I considered writing an email back with a lengthy treatise on how artist infusion into industrial and blue-collar neighborhoods has always been (at least in New York) the first step toward an influx of investment and developers. From the Village, to SoHo, to LES, and finally to Williamsburg, is it any wonder that Bushwick would be next, even quicker than the last? One of the most obvious indicators being massive bacchanalias, which will always attract the attention of industry types and well-monied thrill-seekers. I decided to go with the opposite approach:
“You want ‘feverish teetering on the brink of mania? You want the ‘grit’ of ‘Wild Brooklyn’? Go smoke crack and stand out in East New York at 3 in the morning.” But, you know. I was still going to attend…
posted by GideonLevy | 4:18 PM
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