Space. The Final Frontier. And increasingly in NYC it is harder and harder to get and hold onto, especially when the neighborhood you gentrified gets really gentrified and you get completely priced out. It’s bad news. And so it goes with the Collapsable Hole which, for the past 13 years has served as a breeding ground for all kinds of creative mayhem and wonder. As much as the Hole has reputation for dissolution, inebriation and iniquity, it has an equally proud history as an artist-run space where people could do whatever the hell they wanted while they figured out what they were making. I’ve seen spectacular success and even more spectacular failures, but I was never, ever bored. From Radiohole’s Radiohole Is Still My Name to Hoi Polloi’s Shadows to Banana Bag & Bodice’s Panel/Animal, some of my favorite shows of all time were at The Hole. Wanna check out an incomplete list of all what they done did at The Hole? See the list below.

It’s funny – and I’m going to write about this more soon – but all the great spaces that are institutions now started out artist-run, mostly collectively. PS122, DTW (now NYLA), The Kitchen and so forth got big and less agile, more institutionalized. There’s an upside, but there’s a downside as well. The creativity, inventiveness and dynamism of artist-run spaces regularly generates more exciting art, easily and regularly crushing the output of organizations run by career administrators.

We’re going to talk about that more in the upcoming Brooklyn Commune meetings, specifically on October 21 with a small, independent spaces summit (venue TBD).

But artists are resilient, more resilient than organizations, and the Hole will carry on in our hearts, if not at 146 Metropolitan Ave. Mayhaps it will be replaced by something more audacious and unbelievable, a great lumbering beast of creative mayhem striding out into the slumbering city streets, catching it unawares, like.

But for now, raise your.40 and spill a few in memoriam of the passing of this hallowed hall, sing a sad song and then a tuneful air for After 13 years of hosting Colossal Acts of Degradation (and other enormities too juvenile to mention) The Collapsable Hole is shutting its doors for good.

Memorial Services will be held:
Saturday September 14, 2013
8pm until …
at The Collapsable Hole
146 Metropolitan Ave.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

IN MEMORIAM: AT THE COLLAPSABLE HOLE OVER THE YEARS

RADIOHOLE & COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“Bend Your Mind Off”

JULIANA FRANCIS
“St Latrice”

ANNA KOHLER
“Hardly Knowing”

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE
“Show of Shows”

DRENCH (SUZZY ROCHE, KATE VALK, KOOSIL-JA)
record release

RADIOHOLE
“Wurst”

COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“Witch Mountain, Black Tarantula”

LINAS PHILLIPS + KOURTNEY RUTHERFORD
“Northwind/Turkey Timber”

KAREN HAIR
“Liquid Miserable Regards”

VARIETY THEATER
“The Dog and Pony Show”

AARON LANDSMAN
“Love Story”

REAL PEOPLE THEATER
“Tough”

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE
“Gatz”

RADIOHOLE
“Radiohole is Still My Name”

BANANA BAG AND BODICE
“Panel.Animal”

YOUNG JEAN LEE
workshop

COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“Meat is Floating By”

IMEDIATE MEDIUM
“Chuck Chuck Chuck”

RADIOHOLE
“Fluke”

JOE SILOVSKY
“Jester of Tonga”

COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“Letters from the Earth”

CYNTHIA HOPKINS / ACCINOSCO
“Must Don’t Whip ‘Em”

THE QUAVERS
“Lit by Your Phone” record release

BANANA BAG AND BODICE
“The Fall and Rise of the Rising Fallen”

COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“Place of Dead Roads”

JOE SILOVSKY
“Mustache Harvest”

CYNTHIA HOPKINS / ACCINOSCO
“Success of Failure”

NTUSA
“Chatauqua”

BARBEZ
record release

RADIOHOLE
“Whatever, Heaven Allows”

PHIL SOLTANOFF
“LA Party”

COLLAPSABLE GIRAFFE
“The Last Crash/Pee Pee Maw Maw”

SCIENCE PROJECT
“School for Salomes”

THE DISHWASHERS
“Mercy Killers”

FINDLAY/SANDSMARK
“now and nowhere else”

IMMEDIATE MEDIUM
“Doesn’t Everybody Do It In Paris”

SCIENCE PROJECT
“The Bacchae”

IVER FINDLAY/JOE TRUMAN/ PÅL ASLE PETTERSEN
“See it and Suck!”

GORO TRONSMO
“Muscle Temple”

NOT BLOOD PAINT
“Record release”

JOEY WYOMING
AND THE HOMEOWNERS

FINDLAY/SANDSMARK
“fractured bones”

HOI POLLOI
“Shadows”

SIBYL KEMPSON
“Little Edgar, Lamb of God”

JIM FINDLAY
“Mori Vivi”

AARON LANDSMAN, MALLORY CATLETT
“City Council Meeting”

THE ASSEMBLY
“home/sick”

JOE TRUMAN
“Marble Mouth Reading”

YELENA GLUZMAN
“School for Salomes”

BANANA BAG AND BODICE
“Space/Space”

BIG DANCE THEATER
“Kurbisgeist”

IMMEDIATE MEDIUM
“Winnetou, I.T.”

FINDLAY/SANDSMARK
“Biograph, last year was pretty…”

VICTOR MORALES
“Para-Para-Chute-Shoot”

GOLD NO TRADE
“The Pinks”

JOE SILOVSKY/VICTOR MORALES
“Send for the Million Men”

31 DOWN
“I am Sitting in a Room”

JIM FINDLAY
“Dream of the Red Chamber”

DANIEL ZIPPI
“Untitled”

MIKEL ROUSE, BEN NEILL, BOB MCGRATH
“The Demo”

NTUSA
“Golden Veil” Record Release

MIKE TAYLOR
“Idea Machine”