The Rene Ricard memorial was held at the Eldridge Street Synagogue on May 22, 2014. Speakers included Penny Arcade, Rita Barros, Stefan Bondell, Gretchen Carlson, Francesco Clemente, Patrick Fox, Larry Gagosian, Robert Hawkins, Richard Hell, Lisa Leibmann, Brice Marden, Peter McGough, Eileen Myles, Zac Posen, Luc Sante, Lola Schnabel, Stella Schnabel, Sur Rodney Sur, Anne Waldman, Karl Xtravaganza, Michele Zalopany.

Special thanks to Helen Marden, Jacqueline Schnabel, Raymond Foye, Stefan Bondell and Lola Schnabel for organizing the event.

This excerpt from the evening was produced by Penny Arcade, Steve Zehentner and The Lower East Side Biography Project.

The Lower East Side Biography Project was created in 1999 by performance artist Penny Arcade and video producer Steve Zehentner as an ongoing biography series and oral history archive. The LES Bio Project’s biographies and archive will help to ensure that future generations have access to the mad souls of invention and rebellion that built the Lower East Side’s international reputation as an incubator for authenticity and iconoclasm in art, culture and politics.

The project seeks to stem the tide of cultural amnesia by bridging the cultural gap between long time residents and newcomers to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side. To this end, the LES Bio Project has a community-media training component where young filmmakers are trained in production and post-production technologies and then become shepherds of an individual oral history that they edit into a 28-minute biography. Since its inception, the LES Bio Project has trained over forty individuals, completed forty 28-minute biographies, videotaped dozens more interviews and live events.