Factory-aesthetic film locations were already slated for urban redevelopment in 1960

Evidence

When shooting resumed at the end of the month, the filmmakers were chased off the “demolished ruins on 9th Avenue near 28th Street,” the site—“a field of nothing”—that was to be a mammoth housing development sponsored by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. Even an abandoned railyard in the Bronx was off-limits. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 173

Categorization

• XREF: Directly previews the artist-as-advance-guard-of-gentrification thesis — abandoned sites being filmed were simultaneously being claimed for development, making the avant-garde the visual recording of spaces about to be absorbed by capital.
• SEED: Article angle: the avant-garde film footage of 1960 as unintentional pre-demolition documentation — the camera work of artists as the archaeological record of a city about to be rebuilt.