Jen's Cooper Union Specific EV/LES Project

12/9/2003

4/30/04 Go directly to the IMAGES

2/9/04............... I am expanding the project to include Cooper Alumni from time periods previous to the ones listed. Why not. Let's see what happens! My main interest still is with the time period i know, but i will happily include other periods too, somehow. More pictures soon......and an easier link to get to, perhaps....oh, and one more thing, no photograph is "non-descript" anymore. Nope. Uh-uh. Trust me.

Dear All,

back to : radonprojects.org

First of all, a big hello and how are you!

I have this idea for an project which involves enlisting your help. I think its pretty straightforward and won’t involve much of your time. I’ll try to be brief and to the point.

This thought may not be complete, but so many arrows lately have been pointing to this thought of mine, if i don’t ask now it may be too late. Please forgive any scatteredness. I have a million more things to say about this, but i will save them for the web page, so you may read them at your leisure.

As many of you may or may not know, I still live in same apartment on the lower east side that I’ve lived in since sophomore year at Cooper. Beyond this, I’ve come full circle and have ended up working as the head tech in the Photo department at Cooper. Because of these two things I find myself often explaining to students “how it was in the East Village when I was in school here” and countless hours bitching to friends about how the neighborhood has changed and how everyone has left for Brooklyn. For awhile now I’ve been tossing around ideas of how to maybe make something out of these two things that perhaps wasn’t super nostalgic but not purely documentary. I have a bunch of photographs from my first photo class at cooper in which I was walking around the EV snapping away. Walking around now, you’d hardly know the place looked like that. Sometimes when I am telling student stories, I feel like I’m making things up because they sound so different from what the EV is today. But the pictures don’t lie. I am telling the truth.

We are all in varing states of being 30 more or less. I remember at the time feeling like “duh, everyone is probably taking pictures of this stuff, I need to find my own thing”, but now I see how ephemeral the city really is and how quickly things can change and barely reveal their past. The time period in which we entered New York wasn’t its worst, but it was the tail end of of the tragic 70’s. The galleries that sprung up in the 80’s and started “gentricfication” had all moved to Soho, and the econony tanked at the end of the 80’s/early 90’s. As much as I tried to be oblivious to it, we were living in the real deal, things didn’t “get better” until the dot com boom, mostly after we all graduated. Readng books about the 70’s/80’s…stuff like “Please Kill Me” and Martha Rosler’s “If you lived here” proves my point.

Working with 17-22 year olds (who never get older as I do) has made me realize that even though we are not “old”, we are history now. The early 90’s is long enough ago that we all dressed funny and music was different and especially, especially, projects like the one I am proposing we nearly impossible by the individual (digital has changed all). As I stated earlier I have been thinking about how to structure this for about a year now. Should it be a book, where will I get images, will it be a story, who should I ask? I thought about asking people in the neighborhood for images but today on the G train to my studio it came to me. My basic problem is structure, and the fact that I work much better with people and things that I know. So this is why I have emailed you.

I’m asking if you all could dig out that first roll of film you took for Cooper (for B&W and Color, since they were separate then), or maybe find some images of the EV/L.E.S. from this time period, and send them to me (somehow). I’d like to include outdoor shots, especially of burnt out empty buildings, graffiti, people in groups hanging out on the street (like Dominicans playing dominoes) etc., etc., and also, if you wouldn’t object, views of the insides of your apartments, parties, anything really, even if they are blurry or whatever. I can accommodate things in any format, negatives, prints, scans, slides, perhaps even video.

I am limiting this project to Cooper people as a restriction, and as a way of creating a coherence and continuity. This is our experience being at cooper and living in the EV/LES, before the dorms were the norm, before Starbucks, and Mcdonalds. I’m not 100% sure what form this will all end up being, I was sort of thinking some sort of “filmstrip” sort of video experience (kids don’t know what filmstrips are anymore….sigh), maybe with some loosly based narritive/commentary and hopefully some music from the time. Maybe a book. Maybe some sort of web site thing, depending on how much I learn about this sort of thing. Maybe all of this.

I’m looking for people who were freshman at cooper roughly 1988-1993, but I’m not going to exclude anyone who may have stuff from before this. I think mostly the images should come from the pre-dorm crowd, although the first few years there were pretty valid. I only have email addresses for a few people, but I’m hoping the chain can start here, and am asking anyone who knows anyone else to please email them this, too. There are people I have seen around, but don’t know how to contact them. I can probably also find people through the alumni association. If you feel uncomfortable forwarding this to anyone, and would rather me do it, please email me their address and I will take care of it.

I’m hoping to have some responses by christmas. I know everyone is busy, but maybe you could just let me know if you are interested in any fashion by then or after then. cooper keeps giving me more and more work to do, so I know that I won’t even be able to formulate a complete thought like this until that time, anyway. If you need more clarification also, please don’t hesitate to ask. Everyone invalid in any way will get credit in the final object, and nothing will be reproduced without your permission.

For those of you who don’t know me or remember me and want to know more about the art I make, I have a cd of images I can send to you (will be finished soon) and will hopefully put some sort of web presence together soon. I attended Cooper Union art school from 1990-94, and moved to London to go to graduate school at Goldsmith’s College between 1996-97. When I got back, the Lower East Side had begun to become the playground that it is today. I stated working at Cooper part-time in 1999, and have been a full-time technician there in the photo department since 2000. I teach for the Outreach program and Continuing Education and most recently am teaching undergrad at Cooper.

Thanks so mcuh for reading all of this, and any other stuff associated with this i will add in the future.

Cheers!

jen

you can email me at: jen@radonprojects.org