the red hook
YATES: WE WILL ONLY GET BETTER IF WE TRY- PAGE 5
STAR REVUE
MAY 2020 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
FREE THE NEW VOICE OF NEW YORK
Spaceworks artists may be evicted during pandemic
19
below-market-rate studios for artists in Williamsburg and the South Bronx are slated to vanish in May, leaving painters, sculptors, writers, and dancers with the grim task of moving out during a pandemic.
Until recently, more than two dozen artists in Gowanus were in the same boat. On March 31, the city-initiated nonprofit Spaceworks, which has used funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Council, and private philanthropy to provide subsidized spaces for artists since 2013, quietly announced that it would cease operations in June due to budgetary shortfalls. The impending shutdown drew wider attention in April, however, due to a public campaign mounted by the communitybased organization Arts Gowanus on behalf of 28 artists facing eviction at 540 President Street in Brooklyn. Spaceworks, which leases a portion of the building from PDS Development
by Brett Yates works also waived rent for the month of May and walked back an earlier warning that artists would lose their possessions if they didn’t pack up in a timely fashion.
Corporation, had informed its subtenants that they had to vacate their workspaces by May 25. Arts Gowanus offered to take over Spaceworks’ management contract (or to help negotiate new, individual leases between the artists and the landlord), but PDS, which has not revealed its plans for the soon-to-be-empty space, rebuffed the nonprofit’s attempt to keep the artistic community in place beyond the lifespan of Spaceworks. Artists, however, spoke out about their reluctance to break quarantine for the sake of an impatient landlord, earning the sympathy of local journalists and the neighborhood’s councilman, Brad Lander. By the third week of April, organized pressure – led by Johnny Thornton, Arts Gowanus’s executive director – had persuaded Spaceworks and PDS to coordinate a stay of execution in Gowanus. The occupants of studios at 540 President Street will hold onto their workspaces until one month after
While artists in Gowanus are still hoping for a resolution that would allow them to keep their studios on a long-term basis, the negotiated delay has made the prospect of moving out – if necessary – less daunting. No such delay has yet been promised to Spaceworks artists in Williamsburg or the South Bronx.
Milteri Tucker Concepcion, the director of Bombazo Dance Co. will lose her Spaceworks studio.
the expiration of Governor Cuomo’s stay-at-home mandate (New York on PAUSE) – June 15 at the earliest – irrespective of the termination date of Spaceworks’ master lease. Space-
Spaceworks manages 15 private studios, a community project space, and an exhibition space on the ground floor of 240 East 153rd Street, an affordable housing development – branded Park Avenue Green – in the Bronx neighborhood of Melrose, completed in 2019 by the developer Omni New York LLC. On the second floor of Williamsburgh branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) at 240 Division Avenue, Spaceworks rents out four private studios as well as hourly rehearsal rooms
(continued on page 12)
A VIEW FROM OVERSEAS
Using the health crisis to break up NATO
W
hatever any government may say, there is not a country with better weapons to face the pandemic, but only countries with better or worse transparency. As never before, sharing information among governments is vital to save lives, and a demonstration of solidarity far bigger than sending medical equipment – which is clearly useful but is not the solution to the global crisis. China and Russia, in fact, are using humanitarian medical aid to expand their influence in the West. Europe in particular is the center of this strategy, as Beijing and Moscow send face masks almost once a week to European Union countries like Italy, ruled by a center-left government that is closer to China and Russia than it wants to admit. Indeed, Italy has been the main European sponsor of China's Belt and Road initiative, the commercial plan to flood (even more than now) the Western market with Chinese-made products and to control European harbors like Trieste in Italy, already strategic for connections with Asia. Xi Jinping and Putin know that Europe is the key to strengthening their economic power in the West and supplanting the United States. If now they are sending medical help, tomorrow they will send money, with state loans becoming the new weap-
by Dario Pio Muccilli
ons to consolidate dominance over smaller countries. Nevertheless, many European politicians push for a stronger relationship with the two Eastern powers, believing that they can play chess together without seeing their kings captured. The main reason this approach is so widely promoted is that Asia is such a fertile market, whose work rules are less tough than elsewhere. Many governments in Europe are like sailors navigating a sea populated by the ancient Greek Sirens without covering their ears. Wishing to assert their legitimate claim to independence from American foreign policy, they make alliances with countries that could represent a threat to their freedom. The US must emphasize its role as the guarantor of European freedom in order to persuade the EU that the Atlantic alliance is the best one. The current outbreak may change the geopolitical structure of European Union, as it will choose its allies according to the amount of help received. US officials understand this, which is why they are trying to push European public consciousness in favor of Washington. On April 9, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo gave interviews to eight European newspapers, with one message: "No one will help you like the USA.” But he is not the only one who has a voice on media across Europe, as there are many websites and TV programs that host intellectuals like Diego Fusaro, an Italian philosopher well-known throughout Europe, who believes that the US has shown a lack of solidarity with Europe because of the recent NATO exercise “Defender Europe 20” in Germany and Poland. He said that while USA was sending 6,000 soldiers, China sent medicine. Fusaro is historically a supporter of Russia, linked to the Italian extreme right, as he wrote articles with titles like “Praise to Putin’s Russia.” He’s now trying, like a thousand others, to undermine American prestige with conspiracy theories about an alleged invasion of Europe supported by NATO. US
(continued on page 2)