A xeroxed relic from the raw nerve of downtown New York, Wednesdays at A’s blurs the line between ephemera and artifact. This DIY flyer advertises a night of experimental performance and music at 330 Broome Street—what would become a crucible for the no-wave, neo-expressionist, post-punk energy of the Lower East Side. Scrawled by hand, collaged with type, and punctuated with the tag “SAMO©,” it carries the unmistakable residue of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s early identity, before the galleries came calling.
“Color xerox-works” and names like Joe Lewis, Kristen Hawthorne, and Alan D. mark it as more than just a party—it’s an index of a transient scene where art, music, and activism were inseparable. The flyer’s graphic urgency mirrors the ethos it advertised: fast, cheap, radical.
In the context of MoMA, Wednesdays at A’s becomes a document of resistance: against polish, against commodification, against the erasure of the experimental. SAMO©, both tag and myth, haunts the margins—a ghost of brilliance sprayed across a world still trying to catch up.
Archefact 