PRaxis DIspatch-001: EBA, PR, BU, QE2

Original Message:-----------------
From: PRaxis
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2006 11:04:22 +0200
To: galligan@sprynet.com
Subject: Bcc: Fear of Blotto
Source: Blackberry Svetozor

I think what differentiated me from many of those who were involved in or who experienced those very creative WORKSPACE years was the fact that I actually grew up in Albany, on then-bucolic Shaker Road, went to Public School #20 in North Albany and later Albany Academy. I never thought that I would settle back in Albany after living in Boston and attending B.U. I had aspirations for life in a bigger city. But I came home after graduation in 1977, in need of a job and, though a public works program, got my first job in my chosen field as the PR director for the dance company and school EBA, living in the attic of the dance company's building on Hudson Street.

Suddenly I felt as if I were living in a city which I had never known, living downtown, surrounded day and night by young aspiring artists (dancers and musicians) stimulated by their creativity and energy, introduced to their friends who were artists in other realms (painters, scupltors, writers, video and performance artists). It was the beginning of the city's downtown revivial: with visual artists living and working in lofts on such (to a native Albanian) formerly "dangerous" streets as Sheridan Avenue and Green Street; Lark Street's development with the opening of Justin McNeil's and Cathy's Waffle Shop; new offbeat performance spaces such as the Eighth Step Coffeehouse, the Perfoming Arts Loft on Central Avenue, the 3rd Street Theater in Rennselear; renovations of formerly abandonded cultural sites as the Palace Theater and the Harmanus Bleecker Center; and nightclubs such as Bogart's and the QE2 featuring terrific local bands such as The Units (later
Fear of Strangers), the Executives and Blotto.

And, of course, among it all was Workspace, whose members' "guerilla"
performances, exhibitions and publications were, by turns, fascinating,
bizarre, twisted, diabolical, playful, impetuous, mysterious. After so much
time, my memory fails with regard to all that I witnessed, but I remember in
particular one of the first Workspace events I saw: a Dadaist (though I knew
nothing of Dada at that time) performance by the witty Ed Atkeson at a space
on Lark Street, involving various items and their physical properties, which
was hilarious to me. I had never before witnessed what soon became known as
"performance art".

Through the years I met and befriended many other brilliant individuals who
were involved with Workspace. Names such as Durlak, J. Frank,
and, of course, Galligan come quickly to mind......

...and so, for me, the creativity and intelligence of Workspace (and all
those creative souls associated with it) were a pebble, the ripples of which
have constantly inspired in me a search for something new, different,
amazing, exciting, compelling and moving...something "beyond the usual",
which I have certainly found in my life here in Prague.

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Steve Fisher, [PRaxis] moved to Prague 10 years before the Velvet Revolution