The EPI opened in a filthy space converted in under five hours

Evidence

The hall “had absolutely no charm whatsoever,” John Cale recalled. “You trudged upstairs to this place that smelled of urine. It was filthy and had no lights.” The Factory only got access to the Open Space five hours before opening night. A hastily spray-painted banner of the sort that fluttered above MacDougal Street coffeehouses was hung from the Dom’s upper windows; Gerard Malanga began whitewashing the interior walls. Warhol’s crew lugged three film projectors downtown, as well as assorted lights and gels, several strobes and a Jazz Age rotating mirrored ball, found in a thrift shop, that was lying around the Factory floor. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 839

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s ‘cheap rent, ignorable art forms, physical proximity’ thesis — the venue’s squalor was a precondition of the scene.