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MoRUS Benefit Show for “UnReal Estate”
February 22, 2013 @ 7:00 pm - 11:00 pm
$5 – $10
Lower East Side artist Fly will present ‘UnReal Estate,’ a slideshow about late 20th century squatting in the Lower East Side.
The UnReal Estate squatter archive project started in 1995, the 15th anniversary of the infamous Real Estate Show, an artist squatter action on New Years Day in 1980 that resulted in the eventual acquisition of longtime art & activist community center ABC No Rio at 156 Rivington Street. The UnReal Estate project is a multi-media archive & a living history of squatting & homesteading in the Lower East Side focusing on the 1980’s & 1990’s. It highlights the struggle of squatters to keep their homes and their eventual success with 11 buildings.
Radical comic book artist Seth Tobocman will present slides from his book War in the Neighborhood. A squatter, former anarchist punk, social activist and cartoonist, Seth Tobocman also lived on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and participated in grassroots efforts to take over abandoned tenements in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Along with a ragtag neighborhood collection of working-class blacks, Puerto Ricans and whites, as well as artists and homeless people from all backgrounds, Tobocman secured affordable housing. In his work, Tobocman revisits the violent battles with the police, the local characters who organized and rehabbed the squats and the slow disintegration of the movement. Ben Barson and Eric Blitz will accompany Tobocman’s slideshow on various musical instruments. Legendary Downtown Performance Artist Penny Arcade will Speak Her Mind. Acoustic music from C-Squat musicians Banji Unplugged & Nico DeGallo Crust-Rapper: Crusty P & The Adventures of Kaila & The Kid (Hip Hop featuring Kid Lucky & Kaila Mullady)
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) is a living archive of urban activism that opened in the legendary C-Squat’s storefront in December of 2012. The museum chronicles the East Village community’s history and grassroots activism. It celebrates local activists who transformed abandoned buildings and vacant lots into vibrant community spaces and community gardens. Many of these innovative, sustainable concepts and designs have since pulsed out to the rest of the city and beyond.