Like Paris in the 1920s New York City in the 1960s was a cauldron of avant-garde ferment and
artistic innovation. Boundaries were transgressed and new forms created. Drawing on interviews
memoirs and the alternative press Everything Is Now chronicles this collective drama as it
was played out in coffeehouses bars lofts storefront theaters and ultimately the streets.
The principals here are penniless filmmakers jazz musicians and performing poets as well as
less classifiable artists. Most were outsiders at the time. They include Amiri Baraka Bob
Dylan Allen Ginsberg Yayoi Kusama Yoko Ono Nam June Paik Carolee Schneemann Jack Smith
Andy Warhol and many more. Some were associated with specific movements (Avant Rock
Destruction Art Fluxus Free Jazz Guerrilla Theater Happenings Mimeographed Zines Pop Art
Protest-Folk Ridiculous Theater Stand-Up Poetry Underground Comix and Underground Movies).
But there were also movements of one. Their art rooted in the detritus and excitement of urban
life was taboo-breaking and confrontational. As J. Hoberman shows in this riveting history
these subcultures coalesced into a counterculture that changed the city the country and the
world.
