Avant-garde movements operated from cramped borrowed studios above established venues

Evidence

The Guild established headquarters in the Contemporary Space, a cramped, oddly shaped, low-ceilinged studio belonging to the dancer-choreographer Edith Stephen. Just off Sheridan Square, at 180 Seventh Avenue, it was two floors above the Village Vanguard, where, prompted perhaps by the Revolution, Ornette Coleman played his first gig since the Town Hall disappointment of December 1962. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 581

Categorization

• XREF: The physical-material conditions theme ties to the reader’s thesis about cheap rent and physical proximity producing invention density.