BOOTS/August 23rd 1970
This is a sculpture using boots as vessels for capturing certain NYC smellshapes and walking them back and forth in time. The boots were conceived for a show focusing on scent vessels.
The piece is inspired by sounds from “The Velvet Underground Live at Max’s Kansas City,” an ‘authorized bootleg’ album that turned out to be the last recording Lou made with the Velvets - he quit the band after one of the Max’s shows.
Max’s Kansas City was a steakhouse and performance space on Park Avenue South that became a magnet for NY seventies glam. The recording was made on a tabletop cassette deck by Warhol factory regular Brigid Berlin; tidbits of stray conversation can be heard above the music. The songs are played with a glimmer of defeat to a small audience that was barely listening. Of course the mythology of the Velvets exploded after that and this recording - with its shitty sound quality, maudlin chatter and Lou’s desultory delivery of iconic songs - is a goldmine of anthropo-scene eavesdropping.
Boots on the ground, 2021
Saltshaker with friends at Max’s 1974Maxx Deli for rent on old Max’s site, 2021Where’s that saltshaker now?
The left boot scent is A New Illusion for which the description is as follows:
“fresh pickles, cologne, black pepper, overheated vacuum tubes, trampled ballooms -hiding a timeless honeysuckle heart. “ Somehow it turns out to smell rather cheerful.
The right boot is “Here Come the Waves - I used a lot of Evernyl, a synthetic oakmoss replacer that was found frequently in perfumes in the early 1970s. Also robust quantities of Choya Nakh. I may have been drunk at the time. Picture this scene while inhaling:
“Scavenging a deserted beach on the Manhattan coast as night approaches – it’s an area that used to be called Madison Park. A gull perches on an old barnacle-covered porcelain toilet bowl that’s resting on the sand. A couple of wild hogs scamper by. You shoo away the gull and take a seat on the bowl, unscrew your wineskin and pour a bit of homemade hooch into a small empty bottle you found half-buried in the sand by your foot. You can’t quite make out the label but it might say, ‘Paco Rabanne – Eau De Calandre.’ You take a swig and look out on the sea.”
Lou drew much of his inspiration from the oozing palimpsest of New York, a city that still peels away from itself relentlessly.
A new illusion? 2021