

DFA: 20 Years Bad Luck, a collector poster showcase
- 12:01 am - 11:59 am | Monday March 07, 2022
- Gallery | Ace Hotel Brooklyn
DFA: 20 Years Bad Luck
This month, DFA Records celebrates its 20th anniversary with a series of happenings at Ace Hotel Brooklyn and a party at the Knockdown Center. The “DFA: 20 Years Bad Luck” installation at Ace Hotel features a selection of promotional posters, artwork and ephemera from these groups.
Born out of notorious dance parties and bad ideas, New York label DFA Records released its first singles by The Rapture and The Juan MacLean back in March 2002. The label would go on to release successful and influential compilations, singles, remixes and albums by acts such as Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, LCD Soundsystem, Hercules and Love Affair, and Holy Ghost! among many others.
Before it was a label, DFA was a recurring party known as Death From Above thrown by James Murphy and friends. The name was taken from an alias Murphy used while working as a soundman for the band Six Finger Satellite, which included a young Juan MacLean. The Death From Above poster, one of a small set screen printed by Murphy, Tim Goldsworthy and others, is a remnant of those early parties in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Like many independent record labels, DFA was built around a tight community of musicians, artists and friends. For years, the label and its primary recording studio, Plantain, were housed in the same West Village building, where DFA artists regularly collaborated. The label’s roster guested on and produced each other’s records, filled out bands when it was time to perform live and formed new acts out of these collaborations. One of the posters included in the exhibition is a group photo shot and released for the first Holy Ghost! LP. It features members of LCD Soundsystem, The Juan MacLean, Hercules and Love Affair, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom, as well as yet-to-be-formed DFA band Museum of Love.
On view through March 30.
*
Other events happening on Mar 07, 2022

NEW INC and Ace Hotel Brooklyn present: public / private – an immersive experience at
public / private steers the choreography of movement through space. With nothing but a set of headphones and each other, guests will navigate Ace Hotel Brooklyn in small groups with audio as their guide. A clandestine hotel room encounter. A delicate discovery. And a reimagination of the relationships and physical environment that have been formed await within. Emerging from months in our homes, distanced from each other, we now have to renegotiate and reimagine how we gather as bodies in…
Read more
Upcoming events at Ace Hotel Brooklyn

The Gallery - GBA's Extended Family with Duvernay Collective at Gallery
Around the corner and down Bond St., our neighbors Guilty By Association are building a digital bridge to empower the creative unseen, redistribute wealth and reengineer an antiquated system — art. This season, we are partnering with GBA for a trio of solo exhibitions featuring a selection of their artist kin. We’re calling it “Extended Family.” GBA and Ace Hotel Brooklyn’s “Extended Family” exhibition series culminates with a life-sized labor of love, a hand beaded wall tapestry by Duvernay Collective. The ten…
Read more

Recipes for the (R)Evolution: Food as Ritual, Culture and Performance at Demo Kitchen
Unable to create performance events during the pandemic, the artists known as Radical Evolution Performance Collective imagined what a community cookbook might look like: a collection of food recipes, performance exercises, and other invitations all designed to explore and experiment on how to gather people in a world amidst pandemic and a nation in social transformation. The result is Recipes for the (R)Evolution: A Radical Evolution Community Cookbook. Here, theater makers from Radical Evolution’s community consider cooking as an everyday…
Read more