Discussion with J. Hoberman, author Everything is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop

Like Paris in the ‘20s, New York City in the ‘60s was a cauldron of artistic ferment. J. Hoberman will introduce his new book and read excerpts recounting an early performance by Jack Kerouac, Claes Oldenburg’s first happening, the Greenwich Village coffeehouse wars and the Beatnik Riot, with a digression on Provincetown in the summer of 1961 that includes a short 16mm movie filmed in the Winthrop Street cemetery by underground filmmakers Ken Jacobs and Jack Smith that had its world premiere 64 years ago at the Sun Gallery.

For over three decades J. Hoberman was a film and culture critic for The Village Voice. His previous books have explored the subculture of midnight movies, the rise and fall of Yiddish-language cinema, and SoHo performance art. His “found illusions” trilogy—which includes The Dream Life, Make My Day, and An Army of Phantoms used Hollywood to refract the history of the Cold War.