Eviction and losing his possessions drove a filmmaker to move into the film cooperative

Evidence

On returning to New York, having pawned his borrowed film equipment to purchase a train ticket, Smith found that his landlord had evicted him in absentia and had thrown his belongings—including paintings, films, books, and records—in the trash. The chronology is murky, yet it seems that, thanks to Ginsberg, No. 12 and other film material had been entrusted to Mekas before Smith left town and, by the time he returned from Oklahoma, Mekas had had a chance to look at his films. In June 1964, Smith moved his special projector into the Coop and himself as well. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 682

Categorization

• XREF: Direct illustration of artists’ precarity and how institutions (the Film-Makers’ Cooperative) absorbed homeless members — bears on the reader’s material-conditions thesis.