I signed up for a week long trial of “IndiePix,” an independent film distribution and online streaming service based in New York City and available through Amazon Prime. I was scrolling through the offerings looking for an art-related movie, and happened upon “Mondo New York,” a semi-documentary movie from 1988 directed by Harvey Nikolai Keith. I say “semi-documentary” because while the various scenes are all capturing various performance artists and life in New York City in the late 1980s, it’s all tied together by an non-verbal actress who literally walks through New York City for an indeterminate amount of time, saying absolutely nothing but wandering from scene to scene, as if she were just randomly happening upon these events, and acting as the single narrative tie between all of them.
When I saw the listing for Mondo New York on Indiepix, I immediately remembered the film, as I believe I saw it at some point in the early 1990s, when I was living in New York City myself (the picture above is one of my photos from that time period). But it’s probably been 30 years since I had seen it, so I was ready for second viewing. The subject matter – the downtown scene in NYC in the 1980s, has always fascinated me, for a number of reasons. Number one, because I came east for college and while I was at a school in New Jersey from 1986-1990, I went into New York City on the train or bus on a regular basis and soaked up the atmosphere of downtown and the East Village literally at the same time that this film was made. Number two, as an art student and eventually an artist living and working in New York City, I was quite fascinated with and loved the East Village and SoHo art scene, between the galleries in Alphabet City, Keith Haring’s Pop Shop, Castelli and Sonnabend at 420 West Broadway, and much more.
I can’t say that I saw many of the crazy things that are depicted in the movie, such as drug addicts injecting heroin, a voodoo ceremony, an S&M club, a cock fight, and performance artists such as John Sex, Joey Arias, and Ann Magnuson, but I certainly saw my share of alternative New York on my various explorations as a college student and newcomer to New York City. After I graduated from college in 1990, I moved to Brooklyn and later to Manhattan, so while I missed out on living in 1980s New York, I was certainly in the mix of things in the 1990s.
But the 1980s scene was still very recent history (and in some cases, continuing to exist in the 1990s), and I was fascinated to read more about what I had barely missed out on. These two books below covered a number of people featured in the film, and especially “Art After Midnight” was like an East Village bible for me, I read it and re-read it, soaking it all up. Stories about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, Klaus Nomi, the Mudd Club, the Fun Gallery, and much more.
At any rate, back to the movie: seeing it again after all these years, it was fun and brought back some memories of New York City at a totally different time, but some of the scenes made me realize that part of it was simply meant to shock people, like “look at all the crazy shit we’re into down here in lower Manhattan!” It’s not so easy watching a guy stick a needle in his arm, and fudge around with it until he finds the right spot and then push the plunger in. It’s pretty crazy to see Joe Coleman hold two small mice in his hands, bite their heads off and then light a fuse that blows off firecrackers strapped to his chest. There was also a brief scene where a woman – I’m not sure who it was – gives a little rant about the East Village and Alphabet City, suggesting that going to Avenues B, C, and D were a last frontier. I can speak to those areas being a bit tough and having at times a sense of danger in the late 1980s, but from a 2024 perspective, it came across as a white woman acting like all these white hipsters were doing a Lewis and Clark exploration of a part of the city that was much more racially diverse than the areas they were coming from. I don’t know if I’m describing this accurately, but it was the vibe I had while watching that particular woman’s commentary.
Maybe I’ll dig through some of my old photos and post some of my own “mondo” experiences, as a sort of lens back into a different time. Stay tuned!