Jeff Stark: A Little Nonsense Never Hurt Anybody
Stark started Nonsense NYC—his widely read, free weekly email list of art events, DIY classes, underground parties, and all manner of urban weirdness—in 2000, at a very different moment in the city’s history. Brooklyn was just beginning to earn its reputation in the press as a bohemian wonderland. Social media tools that make spreading information about independent parties or art happenings as easy as checking your phone were still years away. Stark’s list has thrived, providing both an outlet for artist promotion and a weekly story of will and possibility.
Stark’s a participant, not just a chronicler. He founded Brooklyn’s now-entrenched Idiotarod shopping cart race, handing it over after three years to focus on fresher ideas. He’s been a chief organizer for Madagascar Institute, the “guerilla art” combine behind the annual Maker Faire. He once put on a play performed entirely on moving subway cars. For him, the city’s only cultural constant is the shape-shifting agility of its creative community.
“If you get really attached to a certain way of working, or a certain kind of space, and that’s all you want to do, you’re going to have a hard time. What artists do—what they’ve always done—is adapt to the spaces they are in. Right now, we’ve got to define ourselves in a really expensive city that costs a lot to live in with waning amounts of cheap, available space. So people are creating things in cracks all over the place,” Stark says.
“Everyone imagines that I’m on this perch where I can tell you New York isn’t as cool as it used to be. I’m never going to say that. The coolest thing I’ve seen in the last 12 years happened last year.”
