A conversation with four former Eye writers and editors: Carlo McCormick, Marc H. Miller, Walter Robinson, and Yasmin Ramirez. The conversation will be moderated by Hugh Ryan, the author of The Women's House of Detention and When Brooklyn Was Queer. The panelists will discuss their memories of working on the magazine, as well as the East Village culture of the 1980s. Cultural explosions, much like those of stars as seen from earth, are often learned about only years later. That might well have been the case for the exciting, liminal culture of the Lower East Side in the 1980s. It was a time when the arts were innovating, not only in established but redrawn genres, such as those of painting, performance art, punk rock, theater and dance; but in the creation of new, un-heard of forms of these genres, such as hip-hop (in music and fashion) and breakdancing. The mainstream media was largely unaware of this creative outpouring, but in 1979 Leonard Abrams founded the East Village Eye, which for the next 9 years, provided a rich documentation and appreciation of an era of unprecedented cultural liveliness and rebirth. The Eye was a magazine that covered art, culture, politics, and news in the East Village, and published 72 issues until it ceased publication in 1987. The paper provided an extensive document of New York City's downtown scene during this time. Many of the artists, musicians, writers, film and theater directors, and others that made up the contributors and readers of the East Village Eye are now recognized as significant cultural figures of the 1980s.
New York City, NY; NYC