Lydia Lunch Papers
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Abstract
Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch, 1959) is an American singer, photographer, writer, actress, and spoken word performer of the New York no wave and punk scene. Lunch founded the no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks with James Chance in 1976, and in her solo career has collaborated with Exene Cervenka, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, No Trend, and the Birthday Party. Lunch records and performs as a spoken word artist with frequent collaborators, and writes literature and underground comix, often with autobiographical content. She has also appeared in films by Richard Kern, Scott B, and Beth B, as well as written, directed, and acted in her own underground films. The Lydia Lunch Papers date from the mid-1940s to 2019 and consist of materials created and collected by Lydia Lunch documenting her artistic career and output as a singer, writer, photographer, actress, and spoken word performer in the New York punk and no wave scenes. Materials include press clippings, press kits, set lists, posters, magazines, performance promotional material, personal journals and notebooks, original writings for songs and spoken word pieces in various stages, commercial audiovisual material, and published writings. A significant portion of the collection is photographs taken by a variety of artists active in the 1970s through 2000s including Christina Birrer, J K Potter, Annie Sprinkle, Sheyla Baykal, Bart Frescura, Michael Levine, and Marc Viaplana. Most of these images are of Lunch taken for album covers and promotional material, but there are also images with others from her artistic circle including Emilio Cubeiro, Exene Cervenka, Henry Rollins, Rowland S Howard, and Nick Cave. Lunch was also a photographer and a large portion of this collection contains her digital and print images, mostly of friends and from her performance touring locations throughout the United States and internationally. A significant amount of analog as well as digital audio and video recordings of Lunch's studio and live performances, both solo and with others are also in this collection dating from the late 1970s to the 2010s. Performances took place in clubs including the Knitting Factory, CBGBs, and the Kitchen in New York City, as well as in international venues in Spain, Germany, Australia, and Poland. The collection also contains the files and audiovisual recordings of friend, film co-star, and fellow spoken word performer Emilio Cubeiro.
Biographical Note
Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch, 1959) is an American singer, poet, writer, actress, and spoken word performer of the New York no wave and punk scene from the mid-1970s through the 2000s. She founded the no wave band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks with James Chance in 1976, and in her solo career has collaborated with Exene Cervenka, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Nick Cave, No Trend, and the Birthday Party. Lunch records and performs as a spoken word artist, with frequent collaborators, and writes literature and underground comix, often with autobiographical content. She has also appeared in films by Scott B and Beth B, as well as written, directed, and acted in her own underground films.
Arrangement
Organized into two series:
Series I. Photographs and Work Files
Series II. Performance and Studio Recordings
Scope and Contents
This collection contains materials created and collected by Lydia Lunch documenting her artistic career and output as a singer, poet, writer, actress, and spoken word performer in the New York punk and no wave scenes. Press clippings, spoken word performance scripts, setlists, and promotional material for Lunch's performances at various venues around New York and internationally are in this collection, as well as material related to her writing, including project files, lyrics, notebooks, editions of her books in various languages, and manuscripts. There are copies of many of her albums and movies in this collection, which are only available for reference and not for viewing, spanning her entire career from the 1970s to the 2000s. This collection also contains a small amount of material on her friend and fellow spoken word performer, Emilio Cubeiro, some promotional material on Lunch's company Widowspeak, tour contracts and royalty statements, and Lunch family ephemera. This collection also includes photographs of Lunch, friends, and collaborators by various photographers active during the 1980s through 2000s, the majority of which were used for album covers and publicity material.
The largest portion of this collection is photographs created by Lunch dating from the 1990s to the 2000s. Her subjects included places, portraits of children, and images of her friends including Emilio Cubeiro, Gene Gregorits, Debi Mazar, Hubert Selby Jr, Foetus, Jerry Stahl, and Terry Kopenhager. Her photographs explore a variety of themes including simulated bondage, people handling and threatening others with weapons, and self-mutilation. Lunch also took images during her performance tours in the United States and overseas, including Switzerland, Germany, London, Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, New York, and Prague. Lunch's documentation as an actress on various film sets includes digital images from The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things in 2003.
This collection also contains unreleased audio and video performances and studio recordings dating from the mid-1970s to 2010s. These recordings include live performances by Lunch, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Beirut Slump, and other Lunch collaborators in New York clubs including CBGBs, the Kitchen, and the Knitting Factory, as well as international venues in Spain, Germany, and Australia. This collection also contains recordings from performances by Lunch's friend Emilio Cubeiro and his band Hot Lunch from the 1970s and 1980s This collection has a small number of studio recordings of Lunch's songs.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Lydia Lunch Papers; MSS 590; box number; folder number or item identifier; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.
Location of Materials
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased from Lydia Lunch in October 2019; the accession number associated with this gift is 2019.077.
Born-Digital Access Policies and Procedures
Advance notice is required for the use of computer records. Original physical digital media is restricted.
An access terminal for born-digital materials in the collection is available by appointment for reading room viewing and listening only. Researchers may view an item's original container and/or carrier, but the physical carriers themselves are not available for use because of preservation concerns.
Audiovisual Access Policies and Procedures
Select audiovisual materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers. Materials not yet digitized will need to have access copies made before they can be used. To request an access copy, or if you are unsure if an item has been digitized, please contact Fales Library and Special Collections, special.collections@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596 with the collection name, collection number, and a description of the item(s) requested. A staff member will respond to you with further information.
Appraisal
Duplicate copies of commercial CD or DVD recordings (59 CDs, 2 DVDs, and 4 vhs) were transferred to the New York University Avery Fisher Center For Music and Media.
The following born-digital materials were blank and removed from the collection: FA_MSS_590_107; FA_MSS_590_30; FA_MSS_590_33
Bank statements, medical records, receipts, and duplicate promotional material and clippings were removed from the collection.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Original caption information, when available, was transcribed onto the new folders and were rehoused in appropriate size boxes. Rolled posters were sent to the conservation lab for treatment and housed in appropriately sized containers. Analog audio and audiovisual materials were assigned unique numbers, labeled, and physcially grouped together by format into new containers.
107 carriers were forensically imaged, analyzed, and arranged in Forensic Toolkit. New York University Libraries follow professional standards and best practices when imaging, ingesting, and processing born-digital material in order to maintain the integrity of the content.
CDs and DVDs with imaging issues were transferred to the Digital Archivist on 8/2/2021 for further analysis and possible future imaging: FA_MSS_590_36, FA_MSS_590_43, FA_MSS_590_44, FA_MSS_590_50-_53, FA_MSS_590_61.
