Document's URL guide to staying cultured from your couch
It’s been just over a week since cinemas, museums, and music venues started shutting down on the coasts then across the country. In New York City, the emergency response to the coronavirus pandemic coincided with the first days of spring; typically a time of year when New Yorkers morph into rabid brunch monsters and descend upon city parks with contraband wine as soon as the temperature hits 60 degrees. But in America’s crisis epicenter, instructions to stay home and cancel plans have created an unexpected sense of solidarity and creativity. Museums, musicians, and presidential candidates have adapted to this weird new world just as rapidly; pivoting from IRL to URL to keep us connected, informed, and entertained while apart. From Boiler Room’s bedroom mixes to Bernie’s roundtable teach-ins, here’s what we’ll be doing on the internet this week.
Boiler Room’s Streaming From Isolation
Shuttered venues and canceled shows aren’t just a bummer for fans of underground music. It means something of an existential threat to the community at large. But Boiler Room’s Streaming From Isolation series keeps the egalitarian spirit of dance music alive, combining a sick lineup of DJs with charity efforts and apartment porn. There’s something about watching Mall Grab perform to a crowd of stuffed animals and The Black Madonna wiping her nose on her PJs that screams solidarity, even though their turntable setups are cooler than yours will ever be. There will be new sets daily on Boiler Room’s YouTube.
The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
The melancholy hanging over last weekend was compounded by news that Genesis P-Orridge had left this world. The industrial performance artist and provocateur “dropped her body,” according to h/er daughters, on March 14, to be reunited with “h/er other half” Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge—turning the music of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV into a perfectly chaotic, cathartic soundtrack for our weird new lives under lockdown. Stream Slate, formerly known as Screen Slate, is now streaming director Marie Losier’s magnificent 2007 documentary about the radical romance between Genesis and Lady Jaye. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye explores the spiritual and surgical efforts they underwent for their ‘Pandrogyne’ project, and is streaming for free on Losier’s Vimeo.
Omari Wiles online voguing classes
Omari Wiles, founding father of the House of Oricci, was set to perform his ‘Les Ballet Afrik: New York Is Burning’ at Guggenheim next weekend. That’s no longer happening, for obvious reasons. But according to the Voguing legend’s Instagram, Studio Omari is now offering dance lessons via Skype. DM for details, get a ballroom history lesson, and work off the three-month supply of quarantine peanut butter you’ve already eaten straight out of the tub. Class is in session Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with topics including ‘Vogue Femme’ (5pm), ‘Oldway’ (7pm), and ‘Afrobeats’ (7pm). It’s free but Venmo, PayPal, Cash App if you can.
WWE Friday Night Smackdown
Team Document has taken field trips to the underground of Brooklyn’s Outlaw Wrestling and the southern-fried smackdown known as ChokeHole. But in these times of social-distancing, when live audiences are emblems of a bygone era, watching the original superstars of WWE becomes an equally surrealist experience. Stripped of distractions and surrounded by empty stadium seats, the fights appear strangely intimate. And much like the democratic primary debates, suggest live audiences aren’t always an essential element. You can get a free trial subscription to Friday Night Smackdown on WWE’s YouTube.
Bernie Sanders’s coronavirus teach-ins
Over the weekend, the Sanders campaign announced it had raised $2 million for five charities helping those hardest-hit by COVID-19. As the 2020 election starts to slip off America’s radar, the former democratic frontrunner has pivoted from live campaign rallies to live-streaming roundtables on the coronavirus pandemic—spliced with musical performances and disturbing-but-fun pop quizzes. Do you know how many rural hospitals have been closed in the past decade? 120! See here for a schedule of upcoming teach-ins about how we can stop everyone dying and organize for workers’ rights in a time of crisis.
