RENT STRIKE

BUSHWICK, NY: On the night of July 13th, 1977, a typical hot, stinking, economically depressed night in New York City’s 70’s, a bolt of lightning arrived to earth, unshackled the chains of power, plunged the city into darkness, and rallied the city’s most repressed citizenry, notably the residents of Bushwick, against the machinations of their oppressors. Buildings were looted. Property was burned. The 25-hour blackout was all that was needed to instigate New York’s greatest modern revolutionary miracle.

As we’ve come to expect of miracles, it didn’t last. 30 years later, long enough for a bolt of lightning to travel around the earth over 7 billion times, the Mayor (who also happens to be the city’s wealthiest resident) is pushing low-income residents further out into the boroughs, and the arts, as always, are going with them. The Bruce High Quality Foundation is no exception, and to honor the 30-year anniversary of a bolt of lightning, we’re doing a rain dance of our own.

RENT STRIKE! documents a series of public projects and proposals completed in recent months according to the astrologically-ordained plans of the late Bruce High Quality. Forged in the alchemical crosshairs of art and activism, RENT STRIKE! engages commerce, corporate sculpture, transportation, sports, rent, leisure, food, gender, and other forces of the quotidian clot of a depressingly prosperous New York City. In the words of Bruce High Quality, “These are good and tasteless times. Good and tasteless times call for provocative reflections and murderous predictions.”

Can lightning strike twice? Yes. The odds of being struck by a bolt of lightning twice in your lifetime are 1 in 9 million. But stranger things have happened. The odds of the richest resident of NYC also being the Mayor are 1 in 67.24 trillion. We invite you to celebrate the possibility of the odds being defied. Call the gods. We need a miracle.

special thanks to our photographers Don Felix Cervantes and Oto Gillen as well as to our models Oscar Cornejo, Valerie, Jeanne Detellante, Vincent Gargiulo, and Perry.