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Jack Waters Papers

Call Number

MSS.111

Date

1979-2016, inclusive

Creator

Waters, Jack

Extent

3 Linear Feet in one record carton, one manuscript box, and one flat box.
3 film reels

Language of Materials

Materials are in English.

Abstract

The Jack Waters Papers contains information pertaining to downtown performance artist, filmmaker, writer, media activist and choreographer Jack Waters. The collection contains film elements from the 2001 preservation of three of his films under the supervision of Waters, the Fales Library, Jon Gartenberg, BB Optics, and the Estate Project for Artists With AIDS. In addition, the Jack Waters Papers contain a number of paper files pertaining to his various projects, such as writings, articles, and work with film festivals.

Biographical Note

Jack Waters is a filmmaker, performance artist, choreographer and writer who has been active on New York's Lower East Side performance and art scene for over twenty years. In 1979, Waters received his BFA in Dance from Julliard College in New York City. That same year, he choreographed a performance called Personifications for Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theater. Over the next few years, Waters would go on to choreograph numerous shows for the ADT, such as Echo and Narcissus (1980), Form and Meaning (1984-1986), and Apres Minuit d'Une Faune (1983). In 1981, Waters co-founded POOL, a choreographer's collective that also created films, music, multimedia works, site-specific installations, and other exhibitions both in New York and around the world. POOL has performed and exhibited at the Kitchen, the Franklin Furnace, Creative Time, the Pyramid, La Mama, and Rote Fabric (Zurich), to name but a few spaces. Concurrently, Waters became the events coordinator for a great many performance spaces in downtown NYC, such as Area, The Saint, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, and Limelight, in addition to clubs and venues in other cities such as Miami and Hamburg, Germany.

Waters, along with his partner Peter Cramer, undertook the first of their many collaborative projects together in 1982 when they co-founded Allied Productions, Inc., a not-for-profit multipurpose media/arts organzation. Allied Productions, Inc.'s goal was to foster a sense of community through artistic sponsorship, and to that end supported both individual and collective artistic efforts in every conceivable medium. Under the blanket of Allied Productions, Waters has produced, distributed, and exhibited films, both his and others', in a variety of venues. In 1983, Waters and Cramer also became the co-directors of the ABC No Rio art space on the Lower East Side. Their first exhibition together was the "Seven Days of Creation" show, with each day devoted to the work of a specific artist. Waters and Cramer emphasized community-building in their tenure as No Rio's co-directors (which lasted until 1988), working with public schools and settlement houses in the neighborhood to provide arts instruction for Lower East Side denizens.

In 1985, Waters and Leslie Lowe co-founded Naked Eye Cinema, an ABC No Rio-based film venue dedicated to showcasing challenging work by new filmmakers such as Todd Haynes, Jon Moritsugu, Christine Vachon, Kembra Pfahler, Nick Zedd, Todd Verow, and Cassandra Stark, among many others, beside the likes of Sergei Eisenstein, Maya Deren, and the Maysles Brothers. Naked Eye Cinema devoted itself to exhibiting both film and video in a number of galleries, salons, and nightclubs in addition to ABC No Rio. Under the combined auspices of ABC No Rio, Allied Productions, and POOL, Waters and Cramer organized and produced a number of national and international events and exhibitions.

In 1984, Waters began shooting his first film, Berlin/NY (1984-1986), which was initially used as a backdrop to one of Waters' dance performances. The film documented the similiarities between post-WWII Berlin's collapsed ruins and a pre-gentrified Lower East Side in the 1980's. Among Waters' many other film projects are The Ring Our Way (1987-1992), an ambitious multi-part retelling of Wagner's Ring Cycle that fleshes out the original work's queer subtext; Diotima (1991), which is, in Waters' own words, "a cinematic essay on the pornography debate" that incorporates the contrasting opinions of "Schopenhauer, Dworkin, and the opinions of the cast"; The Male Gayze (1990), a film concerned with "perception, observation, and erotic description"; The Flower Market (1993), a fictionalized video about the homoerotic underpinnings of New York City flower shops; Percodan and Wisdom (1995), a video tribute to the NYC piers; Introducing Mr. Diana (1996), a video portrait of underground zine artist Mike Diana; Remnants (1997), a multi-screen projection event that incorporated live performance, film, video, and slide projection which originally premiered at the Mix Festival in NYC; and Short History/No Memory (2000), a digital video documentary that traces the history of queer and AIDS activism. Waters' films have exhibited in festivals and other venues in New York, such as the Anthology Film Archives, the Millennium Film Workshop, ABC No Rio, the Collective for Living Cinema, and the Cantor Film Center. Additionally, his films have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, and France. In 2000, three of Waters' films - Diotima, The Male Gayze, and Berlin/NY - were selected for preservation by the Estates Project for Artists With AIDS, in conjunction with Jon Gartenberg, BB Optics, and the Fales Library at New York University for an ongoing preservation project of works by HIV+ film- and videomakers.

Waters has consistently been involved in dance for the past two decades as well, either starring in or choreographing his and other people's works. The dance segments of The Ring Our Way and Remnants have been performed in various venues around New York City, and he has additionally co-authored Black and White Study (1999) with Peter Cramer. He has collaborated with Kembra Pfahler, Nicola, and Jackie Kaye in various dance projects as well. Through Allied Productions, Waters and Cramer launched the Dancetube project in 2001, an experimental performance/plastic art group that uses group expression and public performance to foster social activism and for which Waters directed the theatrical extravaganza Il Spettacolo Provolone (2003).

Over the years, Waters has been affiliated with such arts groups as Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab), the Millennium Film Workshop, Film/Video Arts, the American Film Institute, and the New York State Council of the Arts' Visual Arts Program. He has contributed articles on a number of topics, ranging from politics to sexuality to dance, to a great number of publications, including Poz, Fuse, Jumpcut, Lesbian and Gay New York, the New York Blade, the Movement Research Journal, and was a contributing founding writer of the Color Life news journal. Waters has served on numerous committees, including programming and selection work for the Mix Festival (1999-2000) and speaking on panels presented by the Franklin Furnace and the Estate Project for Artists With AIDS (both 2000). Waters continues to be active in the performance scene today and still lives and works on the Lower East Side.

Arrangement

The Jack Waters Papers are arranged into two series: Series I: Files and Series II: Film and Audio. Each series is divided into several subseries.

Scope and Contents

The Jack Waters Papers largely consists of materials relating to Waters' film projects, namely Diotima, The Male Gayze, and Berlin/NY. Among these materials are shooting scripts, original elements and preservation master materials of the films, and audiocassette soundtracks. The collection also contains information about some of Waters' other projects, such as his work with the Mix Festival and various writings and criticism. Additionally, the Jack Waters Papers contains several folders of research and biographical materials pertaining to an article Waters wrote in January 2000 about performance artist Valerie Caris.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restriction.

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; Jack Waters Papers; MSS 111; box number; folder number or item identifier; Fales Library & Special Collections, New York University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Jack Waters, 2001.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

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 NYU 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.

Related Materials

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Dennis Cooper Papers.

Jaime Davidovich Collection.

The Downtown Flyers and Invitations Collection.

Guerrilla TV Archive.

Sarah G. Jacobson Papers.

Alan Klein Papers.

The Mix Collection.

Heather Lewis Papers.

Michelangelo Signorile Papers.

David Wojnarowicz Papers.

Collection processed by

Fales Staff

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 17:02:20 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is written in: English, Latin script.

Processing Information

Processing decisions and actions made prior to 2020 were not recorded and are unknown.

Repository

Fales Library and Special Collections
Fales Library and Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012