The Citizens Band: The Trepanning Opera, 2005. Photo by Mathu Andersen

Deitch Projects has closed its doors, ending of an era of art and performance in New York City.

Say what you will about Jeffrey Deitch, and plenty of people have a plethora of opinions, but he kept an orbit of fascinating and smart people circulating around him and was always game to experiment

I had the opportunity to work in and with the gallery on multiple projects, most significantly with The Citizens Band and Chaos & Candy.

My proximity to Jeffrey began in 2001 when Fischerspooner left Gavin Brown’s enterprise to be represented by Deitch. Jeffrey was always curious about what was going on about town and the night I first spent time with him was when he came to see a burlesque night I was a part of at Coney Island. A few months later at dinner I mentioned my dream of putting up a crazy Christmas show with live people dressed as animals in a petting zoo. He was amused and interested enough by the idea to fully support the first incarnation of Chaos & Candy in December, 2002.

By that time, Jeffrey had rented a warehouse on North 1st Street in Williamsburg that became the Fischerspooner rehearsal space, decked out in mirrors and a wooden dance floor. The week after presenting Fischerspooner at the home of George Lindemann during the first ever Art Basel Miami Beach, I transformed the warehouse into Santa’s Workshop. It was a magical experience. To see my dream  manifested full scale in a giant warehouse full of hundreds of people vitalized my sense of what was possible in New York, and for that I am profoundly thankful to Jeffrey Deitch.

Snowflake Dance, Chaos & Candy, 2002. Photo by Sharoz Makarechi

Over the next few years I was involved with a few other projects. With Viva Ruiz I co-curated and hosted a party called Deitch After Dark inspired by the old variety series Playboy After Dark inside of Adam Kalkin’s Suburban House Kit. Viva’s novela Rosa Negra also had a screening premiere at the 110 space in Brooklyn.

In 2004, Casey decided to host a weekly salon series in preparation for the release of the Fischerspooner album Odyssey. The idea was that the band would rehearse and do periodic open rehearsals alternating with guest artist nights, and it turned the space into an amazing art and performance center. Jeffrey commissioned a gorgeous piece by Richard Wood, a canary yellow floor with a toile-inspired bird pattern, and hung the walls with burgundy velvet curtains. Every Thursday night a different group would perform or present – bands like Haunted Pussy, video artists like Angelo Plessas. We also screened the presidential debates on the giant projection screen for a few hundred people in the neighborhood.

I took over for programming the month of October. Classical Night had Andy Butler (Hercules and Love Affair) and I switching off spinning pop takes on classical music mixed in with the real thing, an Isadora Duncan dance number organized by Stephanie Dixon, Angel Eyedealism sang her techno-Mozart Queen of the Night aria, I performed Schubert’s “Erlkonig” with Katie McKay at the piano, Adam Crystal played Ligeti on violin, and Nick Demopoulos put together a fifteen-piece orchestra that played Ravel’s “Bolero” for a truly grand finale. To see the artsy hipster skate kids drinking free Rheingold while surrounded by a ragtag orchestra standing fifteen feet away building in volume to a violent Romantic crescendo was a phenomenal sight.

Another night I put up a live talk show, The Ange Show, starring my good friend Angela DiCarlo. In the style of classic 60s and 70s variety-talk shows a la Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Mitzi Gaynor, it had a live band, guests, and back-up man dancers! Finally, I organized a screening of a film my friend Sarah Sophie Flicker had made. She added that she and her friends had been talking about doing a cabaret, and could it follow the screening? My only caveat was that I wanted to be involved, and thus was the The Citizens Band born.

The Citizens Band, premiere performance, October, 2004. Photo by Tom Carpenter.

To be continued.