edeisenberg - Tumblr blog

[edeisenberg]

This is a memorial website for Ed, a timeline of his life, with links and pictures. This is a very incomplete work in progress. Please check back later for more.

1951-04-04 Ed is born in Brooklyn

1970s Ed is a member of Gay Youth & Gay Activists Alliance

1980 Ed helps found PAD/D at El Bohio

1983-05 PAD/D's art show, Not for Sale: A Project Against Gentrification, at El Bohio.

"It included an exhibition of some two hundred art works, a film and video program, guerilla street-stencil brigades, assorted Punk bands and a cabaret series hosted by the Wow Cafe and Limbo Loung" - Greg Sholette

1983-06-23 NYT mentions the PAD/D show under a column titled "A GALLERY SCENE THAT PIONEERS IN NEW TERRITORIES" and calls it:

an elaborate socio-political roundup - produced by Political Art Documentation/Distribution - of work by artists protesting neighborhood upgrading that sacrifices low-cost housing and its occupants.

For the event organizers, this article prompted soul-searching and fears of cooptation. Janet Koenig joked they had accidentally created "SoHo’s Off-Off West Broadway"

1984 PAD/D's next show, Art for the Evicted: A Project Against Displacement at the boarded-up corner of A & 10tht

For this show, Ed created a poster called Reaganomic Galleries (upload picture from pdf) which was later the subject of Greg Sholette's paper

Craig Owens critiques the show in his article, The Problem With Puerilism, published in the magazine Art In America. (waiting on a copy)

picture of Ed with committee, need to copy

1987-07-14 Ed helps occupy Stapleton, as part of the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Harbor

They are all arrested, becoming known as the "Stapleton 38"

1988 Ed and the other protesters are tried and convicted. Howard Zinn testifies at their trial. Shortly after, he gets the idea for Groundwork.

1988-12-01 The first World AIDS Day

1988-12-14 First Groundwork flyer drafted

1989 During the spring & summer, Ed leads a team of artists in spraypainting antinuclear messages as part of Groundwork. They will eventually spray 10,000 stencils in all 5 boroughs

Ed helps found REPOhistory

1989-10-21 The Artists for Nuclear Disarmament hold a show for a Nuclear-Free Harbor. Ed sells art at this show. While planning for this show, Ed meets Tom Klem.

1989-10-27 Groundwork press briefing at the Isaiah Wall

1989-12-01 The first Day Without Art, coinciding with World AIDS Day. The Organization of Independent Artists sends out a card, reading:

A National Day of Mourning in Response to the AIDS Crisis The Organization of Independent Artists mourns the loss of our friends and colleagues throughout the art community. This is an announcement card for shows we will never get the chance to see by those who are now gone but live on in our memory.

1989-12-18 Newsday article mentions Groundwork:

Elsewhere, 28 artists are making a political statement about a nuclear-free city harbor in an exhibition called "Groundwork: The Anti-Nuke-port Stencil Project." Images stenciled on streets throughout the five boroughs express the artists' opposition to the navy base being built on Staten Island, which will serve as home port for the USS Iowa and other ships capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Each stencil indicates the distance to the base site.

Village Voice also had an article, Just Say No, with picture of Ed spraypainting a sidewalk. Need to find a copy.

1992-06-23 REPOhistory's Lower Manhattan Sign Project. Ed makes a sign about NYC's underrepresentation in the US Senate, and hangs it on Wall St with Tom Klem

another picture on page 211 (copy from pdf)

1994-05 REPOhistory get permission from NYCDOT to hang temporary signs on streetlamps from June 18 to August 31. The project is called Queer Spaces: Places of Struggle, Places of Strength. Ed helps pressure DOT by threatening a rogue press conference. The signs commemorate queer history landmarks.

1997 Queers in Space published. Ed co-wrote the chapter called Queer Spaces in New York City, along with Betti-Sue Hertz and Lisa Maya Knauer

1997-09-01 Ed dies of complications from AIDS

1997-12-01 REPOhistory members spraypaint ED in red letters on NYC sidewalks, at least 60 times

2005-03-18 Gregory Sholette writes the paper: Trickle Down Bohemia and the Anti-Capitalist Art of Ed Eisenberg

2007-02-20 Collectivism After Modernism published. Chapter 7, "Artists' Collectives", mentions PAD/D and Ed. (pdf)

2013-11-05 A People's Art History of the United States published. Chapter 25, "Antinuclear Street Art", tells the story of Groundwork. Nicolas Lampert describes Ed as:

a radical Marxist, a gay activist, an artist, and a musician, the type of person whose practice and activism could not be easily categorized

2016-06-22 Surviving REPOhistory members give a panel discussion, Marking LGBT History in the Village and Beyond: A Panel Discussion with REPOhistory Tom Klem's talk begins at 48:55, mentioning Ed several times.

archival sources to research post-plague:

NYU

MOMA