Silent Barn

Overview

Collectively-run, all-ages DIY arts organism (first in a Ridgewood house (2006–2011), then a three-story Bushwick complex (2012–2018)) that fused nightly experimental-music programming, working artists' studios, a live-in residency, and grassroots youth programming through a non-hierarchical 'Kitchen' governance model, until rising rents and accumulated burnout ended it on April 30, 2018.

Silent Barn grew out of informal kitchen-and-basement shows at 915 Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, beginning in 2006, where an ever-shifting collective around early organizers Kunal Gupta, Joe Ahearn, G. Lucas Crane, Nat Roe, and Lorissa Rinehart hosted all-ages performances for touring and local acts working in noise, lo-fi, math rock, experimental electronic, and 'fringe' sounds explicitly unwelcome at established venues. A 2009 dare (to stage shows every single day in July 2010) became a norm that never stopped; the space entered ALARM Magazine's DIY spotlight by 2008, before it was broadly legible to the press. In the summer of 2011 a M.A.R.C.H. (Multi-Agency Response to Community Hotspots) raid forced closure and an estimated $15,000 in equipment was destroyed or stolen while residents were locked out. A July 2011 Kickstarter raised more than $40,000, funding the collective's transition into a purpose-built, code-compliant space. The Bushwick iteration opened in December 2012 at 603 Bushwick Avenue, a three-story building that became one of the most complex DIY organisms in the city's history. The first floor held the main performance stage and a cafe/bar; galleries Disclaimer Gallery and Casa Experimental occupied project spaces; theater company Title:Point ran its Vital Joint program on-site; more than a dozen artists' studios shared the complex, including Gravesend Recordings (which assembled a cassette compilation documenting the space's first year), record label Double Double Whammy, artist reuse shop Aftermath Supplies, a hairdresser/record store (Deep Cuts), and a synth shop. Four upstairs apartments housed live-in residents. The collective governed through 'the Kitchen,' a consensus body open to all members (roughly 70 volunteer 'Chefs' organized by a living document called the Cookbook) and maintained explicit policies against corporate sponsorship and in favor of safer-spaces enforcement. In 2014, Jazo Brooklyn, a native Brooklynite, founded Educated Little Monsters (ELM) out of the space: a grassroots, free music-and-arts program serving 50–60 Bushwick youth of color weekly, with classes in vocal training, songwriting, theater, visual arts, photography, and dance. The New York Times profiled it in 2013 as an 'alt-arts mecca' (Feuer, NYT, May 2013). A 2015 fire damaged the building and triggered a recovery crowdfund; by late 2017 the collective projected a $69,000 operating loss, launched an emergency campaign on the WithFriends platform, and disclosed it was running a 'less-than-zero-days-to-live margin.' The campaign raised over $30,000, enough, per the collective's own accounting, to cover only one month of rent, payroll, utilities, emergency repairs, bar stock, and overdue expenses. Liquor license complications (the bar was essential to covering a $4-per-attendee revenue shortfall on all-ages shows) combined with accumulated volunteer burnout, and the leaseholders determined there was no 'realistic way forward.' The collective's closure statement also reckoned explicitly with complicity: they acknowledged having observed 'the role that D.I.Y. music venues play within the greater machine of gentrification' and how the neighborhood's native communities were often excluded from the benefits of these spaces even as the venues helped make the neighborhood legible to capital. Silent Barn held its final event (a 'Last Rites' farewell) on April 30, 2018. Educated Little Monsters did not take over the space as had been briefly proposed; the program eventually found alternative housing. Promoter Todd Patrick was subsequently reported to have planned a new all-ages venue in the same building at 603 Bushwick Avenue, though details of that successor's programming and longevity remain under-documented.

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