{"id":17451,"date":"2025-03-31T17:06:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T21:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=17451"},"modified":"2025-03-31T17:06:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T21:06:35","slug":"episode-632-peter-trachtenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-632-peter-trachtenberg","title":{"rendered":"Episode 632 – Peter Trachtenberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Memories Show 632:
\nPeter Trachtenberg<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/secure\/virtualmemories\/Episode_632_-_Peter_Trachtenberg.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a><\/p>

Subscribe: Spotify<\/a> | TuneIn<\/a> | RSS<\/a> | More<\/a><\/p>\n

“Westbeth was designed as an egalitarian community. . . . In any community, you have to have people who are actually involved in its maintenance.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>With his amazing new book THE TWILIGHT OF BOHEMIA: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York<\/a> (Black Sparrow Press), Peter Trachtenberg<\/a> explores the 50+ years of history for Westbeth Artists Housing<\/a> in the far West Village, the role of the arts in New York City, and the ways we build & sustain community. We get into his long<\/em>-term history with Westbeth, how this book’s was born from an essay about the suicide of his friend and Westbeth resident Gay Milius<\/a>, how Westbeth managed to survive a series of financial crises over the decades before finding a sustainable model, and how architect Richard Meier repurposed the Bell Labs complex into affordable artists’ housing in the 1960s. We talk about Westbeth’s requirement that residents be professional artists and what that came to mean over the years (esp. when some residents’ productivity diminished), what it’s like to raise families in Westbeth, and how the community handled generational change. We also discuss how Westbeth reflects New York back on itself, how Vin Diesel’s vandalism as a kid growing up in Westbeth led to his acting career, how the Village’s Halloween parade originated there, how I stumbled across Westbeth in 2017 during \u2014 what else? \u2014 a podcast<\/a>, how we build artistic communities when we don’t have geographic proximity, whether there’s a secret radioactive room left over from the Bell Labs years (!), and more. Give it a listen!<\/a> And go read THE TWILIGHT OF BOHEMIA<\/a>!<\/p>\n

(And go listen to our 2014<\/a> and lockdown<\/a> conversations!)<\/em><\/p>\n

“This book made me understand that a lot of the categories in my mind of what is fine art and what is applied art are arbitrary, that I do not know what is going to be great.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n