Fiume Gallery: A Dark Theater Experiment
People can't get over the eclectic launch party we threw in May. Here’s what really happened.
You Say You Want a New Institution
It’s me, Rachel. I wanted to thank all of you who attended the launch for the Fiume Gallery on May 10th. It was an extraordinary beginning, and we’re now raising funds to secure our permanent gallery space as we call for visionary patrons, strategic backers, and aligned investors ready to fuel this new culture. Whether you were in attendance or not, here is how it all began.
It began in a state of beautiful disorder. Alliances were forged in whispers. Rivalries took shape before the paint even dried. Nothing was fixed and everything was up for grabs. We were building something raw, dangerous, and alive. I wanted more time to talk to people during the launch party. I remember thinking: One day, I want to be in the audience and watch it all unfold. No one will know it was me. That will be the real victory.
Yet nothing comes easy in the art world. A rehearsal clip completely unrelated to the show had gone viral and triggered a wave of speculation. The algorithm picked up on it, and with virality came vultures. Enter Sam Venis, a journalist I’d never met. He showed up uninvited and penned a hit piece that read like some deranged fan fiction. His take was as confusing as his presence. We had more detractors than I was prepared for, but I relish a fresh set of antagonists!
I still don’t know who most of these detractors are, and I’d be more impressed if I did, but what I do know is that every day I receive messages from people asking to stop by Chelsea to visit our gallery. Even as a pop-up we’ve drawn serious attention, and now everyone wants to come by and check out the scene. We launched a major cultural event with no institutional support, budget, or safety net. We handled permits, curation, hospitality, security, press, and programming with a tiny crew.
We decided to go mainstream.
Works from our in-house artists are selling faster than I imagined, and collectors of distinguished names are now pursuing representation at Fiume. What began as a provocative experiment evolved into something far more serious. Now, we are merging the worlds of avant-garde performance and established fine art as we transition into a fully operational gallery and cultural hub in the heart of Chelsea.
Fiume’s launch party was an immersive theater experiment.
The Fiume launch party was a twisted collision of art, politics, and historical theater. So many people showed up: artists, musicians, dark intellectuals, poets, freaks, reactionaries, bohemians, goth girls, tech guys, and obscure philosophers. It was an oddball convergence of factions like the original Fiume in Italy. Last weekend, I was at a nightclub and the bouncer recognized me from the event. There were so many people who attended that I wish I could have talked to. For all I know, some of them are fated to become central to my life, and our real conversations have yet to begin.
The event was an absurdist gathering that was a tribute to French surrealist Antonin Artaud, hence the Theater of Cruelty name. It was a liminal space in which history was reimagined in the setting of an art gallery. Fiume is alive, inhabited by performers, provocateurs, and exhibitions.
It was foundational. It was primal. I regret nothing.
I didn’t think we were actually going to have protestors, but they immediately showed up outside with pamphlets and made themselves a part of the show. Did they know they were participating in the spectacle? I’d have thought they had a background in surrealism. I’m told one of them had to be physically removed by security, yet I’m also told one ended up being a nice guy who ended up buying a ticket so who knows?
They claimed was that we weren’t real Futurists. No, we were the Futurist version of posers who listened to Green Day and Sum 41 in the punk scene. Not the real punks who died of heroin overdoses in their warehouses while listening to GG Allin. D’Aunnunzio would have traveled forward in time to kill us, or so I’m told. Gabrielle, if you’re out there, come meet me in the fields.
Now speaking of D’Aunnunzio, there was a moment when I could have sworn he had possessed me. It was the day of the event and I was feeling burnt out from the endless work, blasting Laibach in the Uber on the way to the venue with one of the other organizers. Everything had happened so fast. Months of prep, 6 AM work sessions, sleepless nights, people dropping out, people hopping in to help at the last minute, and everything else you could imagine. The chaos had accelerated into a fever pitch, everything collapsing into a single ride. Was it D’Annunzio moving through me, or was I staging my own psychotic opera?
So, this Sam Venis guy told our security that Fiume was “a fascist art exhibit for the New Right” and claimed in print that Nazis had attended the launch. He seemed upset that this wasn’t some ironic Red Scare type event. We were perceived to be competing with this incestual clique and viewed as serious people which he really didn’t like.
“For all my wandering through Far Right spaces, I’d never encountered true, straight-to-the-vein fascists first-hand. I was used to the performative fascists: the Dimes Square edgelords with five-bedroom apartments on the Upper West Side. The ones that said ‘retard’ and called it avante-garde. I suppose I should’ve known something was different here.” -Sam Venis seeking attention in his Marinetti in Manhattan hitpiece
Given that in this era Fascism has devolved into the intrusive-thought of the chronically deranged, the farce of this virtue signaling pantomime isn’t worth the dignity of a response. But yeah, something was different. I’m a Jewish artist who isn’t some Dimes Square edgelord. Congrats, Sam. You’ve noticed. (but apparently not that I’m Jewish)
Art is a Rorschach test. It’s meant to provoke, inspire, delight, and infuriate. Anyone can look at your art and tie their own agenda to it. They project. They fantasize. They accuse. You see them through your own lens and this is part of the experience. Everyone sees something different because everyone brings their own private mythology to the viewing. When your gallery is its own work of art people go a little mad with interpretation. This is why Andy Warhol was a brilliant concept artist, the Factory being his true masterpiece—the epicenter of interpretation, of experience.
The Grand Spectacle
The night started with my friends DJ Octopussy and DJ Hervor spinning industrial, goth, synthwave, and electro at the Chelsea loft we’d rented for the launch. People trickled in slowly, like they’d stepped through the wrong door at the right time. Some of the Sovereign House people looked confused. I’m not sure how many of them had been to an art opening or musical event before. Nevertheless, they found their friends in the crowd. It was fun to see them interact with the more artistic people who were now interacting with the more theoretical and pinned down types.
Categories had now stopped making sense. People who would’ve hated each other were deep in conversation. The gallery circuit, veterans of opening nights and art world networking, were also thrown into the mix. I’d met them at other art openings in Chelsea and invited them to mine. I was a crazed socialite birthing my own scene from the trenches. Everyone was there.
Adam Lehrer took the stage and began reciting a violent manifesto as he smashed hideous plastic art someone had purchased from Target. It felt like we were at an early noise show. Queen Thugshaker screamed during her Funeral for Irony as she threw the plastic art into the crowd. People moved to get out of her way in bemusement and fear. When Orcbrand took the stage he began channeling the spirit of Artaud with his absurdist music and giant sword, delivering a hilarious performance that took cringe to the next level. We weren’t trying to be “based.” We were having fun and being ourselves.
Next was a poetry performance from Bexiexz, a poet I met at Deep Tech Week. I think it was around this point Sam Venis asked her why she was black and on the bill for a “white nationalist event” while she was reciting her work. She ignored him because the whole thing was too absurd to address. She just kept on reading. Next, my friend Mark went on and continued the scene with some visceral intensity as he delivered his own set of poetry like a wound laid bare.
The Dictator Pageant - It’s Called Dark Cabaret
It was The Dictator Pageant that drew the most fevered attention, yet what’s historical theater without a little controversy? Goth girls strutted down the runway in beautiful outfits for the Strut of the Valkyries, reading dictator speeches on the catwalk in competition with one another. Who would be queened dictator of the night?
People from the audience yelled comments at the models, some less than charitable, and I personally could have done without that. Yet the girls stood their own and returned the fire. They bit back, one in a literal sense. Martial neofolk thundered as the score. I’d had this kind of thing in mind for a while now, so why not do it for the launch?
Dark Cabaret had once defined my youth, but every age demands its resurrection. The pageant was the highlight of the event, and people won’t stop talking to me about how much fun they had. A few people are still infuriated while others remain perplexed.
The Art of Fiume
As the doors to the art room opened people began trickling in. The Skinless Frank prints sold immediately. People flew all over the country to check out his digital art, along with the fine art paintings of Giovanni Pennacchietti and Alexander Adams, Fiume’s original artists we had showcased at our pre-party. We also showed the digital works of Lordess Foudre, an artist with a cult following who mixes cyberpunk with digital nostalgia. She named her collection the Museum of Deleted Emotions.
The art of Fiume wasn’t necessarily Futurist, despite artists like Giovanni Pennacchietti and Alexander Adams taking inspiration from them. We mixed it all up: the digital art of Skinless Frank and Lordess Foudre with the fine art of Giovanni and Alexander Adams and the realist paintings of Madeleine Carson who is creating masterpieces at the young age of 18.
Continued Affairs
The prestigious Tara Isabella Burton decided to share a few words on us:
“I am not particularly interested in whether Ye wants to say “Heil Hitler” onstage or not, or whether or not some art gallery in Chelsea wants to perform a new version of Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty” with some guy named Skinless Frank or DJ Octopussy. It may well be that we are so ideologically kaleidoscopic these days, that true culture striding “transgression” itself is now a nonsense term.” -Tara Isabella Burton on Fiume here
Tara and I had met last year at a literary event where she’d told me that she wasn't into the downtown scene. I’d told her that I wanted to recruit the more interesting people for something new because everyone was sick of the very online sphere and needed something more IRL and visceral. I respect Tara for her journey and not for her prestige, but it seems like her point was to bemoan the death of religion with Fiume as a sidepiece.
Crossing the Wires
Our sponsors were fantastic. Imperium Press sent us books from Alexander Adams himself, Nick Land, and critical volumes on Jonathan Bowden. We even stocked Georges Sorel. People loved the literature. They browsed, flipped pages, and talked. Heterodox Labs, a startup bringing wonder and imagination back to science, sent in their own swag of hoodies and t-shirts, offering a bold counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s bland uniformity. Jokes Review sent in their fun literary magazines.
Our Movement is on the Rise - Uplift with your Support!
A couple months after our launch, Curtis Yarvin posed with his friend Vlad with a caption about D’Annunzio and Marinetti for a stunt at the Venice Biennale. The influence of Fiume is making waves in DC and Italy.
I want real artists, real talent, and real sincerity. I’m not into the “dissident art hoe” branding. I reject it. I disavow these uncultured swine! I stand opposed to the way so much of the Right is against theater. I support theater, love it, and embrace it. Fiume is theater and it will always be theater.
As we shift into a more mainstream and structured gallery we are looking forward to collaborating with new people and raising to:
Secure our permanent Chelsea gallery space
Fund more exhibitions and performances
Book exceptional musical talent
Establish a cutting-edge artist residency program
Expand new staff and scale our operations
Email us at info@fiume.nyc to become part of this cultural movement. Get in contact and say hello. We can’t do this without you. Let’s make history together.
Cool stuff! Very interesting looking event.
Sounds/looks epic.
I came to one of the cultural futurist virtual poetry events last year and was taken aback by how distinct each artists works were. Such distinction doesn’t seem to exist in the poetry scenes local to me. A shame!