art collectives
Music Wagon HQ:
347 Maujer St. Brooklyn. NY.
06/12/2012 - 01/15/2014
Bushwick-Brooklyn - Music Wagon.
Gathered at the Lower East Side. Due to the high cost of living in the city artists from The Living theatre and the Lower East Side Radio, moved east to Bushwick and formed the Music Wagon.
The co-founders first met, when Ariel De Lion offered Brent Wellington Barker III a radio show on the Lower East Side radio. Brent was living and acting at the Living Theatre on 21 Clinton St, and Ariel was residing in Bushwick and running the radio station on 177 Ludlow Street, 'LES.FM'. A year after opening the Radio, The Living Theatre got evicted, and 9 actors from the theater moved to Ariel's warehouse in Bushwick on 347 Maujer St, in front of an underground venue and Circus, called 'House of Yes'.
The 4,000 square feet dungeons space converted to 9 bedrooms, a rehearsal space, events planning office of Mr. Bugsly Presents and the crew bought a prison bus and converted it to a mobile radio tour bus. One room dedicated to the Rainbow gathering community and one room turned into the New Orleans's coffee shop Amsterdam residency, by Dank Bliss and his Gangsta Latte.
Music Wagon participated and broadcasted from multiple festivals and venues during 2012-2014 and self-produced multiple events, after hours, operate an Art Car and managed several collective lofts and event spaces in Bushwick.
In 2014, after the termination of the lease on 347 Maujer St. The crew moved to 210 Cook St and 110 Troutman St, and the Music Wagon operation merged with the JunXion.
JunXion:
01/06/2014 - present
"Mike Tummolo, for instance, is a founding member of the Junxion, the group that drives around in school buses with Merry Prankster nicknames, like the Mighty Bird and the Music Wagon. Mr. Tummolo has been putting on events in the city for more than a decade, and acknowledged that things were simpler years ago when space was less expensive and even raucous gatherings were more or less ignored by the police. But it was only after he and his partners, in response to financial and security pressures, literally took their act on the road that they felt they had accomplished something.
“It was bumming us out that everything had to be so legal these days,” he said. “Fire codes, liquor licenses, whatever. But then we thought, ‘Wait a second, do we even really need a space? We’ve got five school buses at our disposal. We can go wherever we want.' ” Now, he said, the city’s entire landscape is his nightclub. “The magic,” he said, “is still happening.”
- New York Times
