The Wild Wild West End Oral History
Ivette Spradlin (April Resident)

Rough Cut Screening / Feedback Session

This premiere screening of footage from over 20 interviews is to provide feedback on the direction of this oral history project. 

Artist Statement:

This project was originally developed from the fall of 1999 to the spring of 2000. Tenants of four warehouses in the West End of Atlanta, GA -- punks, artists, dreamers -- agreed to be photographed. In addition, I requested a quote to accompany their photograph. Their likeness, their musings, and the warehouse itself were the subject of a handmade book. It is coptic bond and filled with screenprinted collages from photographs of their living environs and silver gelatin prints of the tenants. All text was letter pressed with hand set type.

The current video oral histories offer a new perspective and documentation of this unique living experience. Whereas the book offers an artifact of Atlanta's DIY scene at the turn of the century, the oral histories offer the memory of a place and time in a subculture. If the book is the facts, the videos are the feeling. From their current home, former tenants tell stories, speak to the freedom felt, the friendships and bonds created, and share the grief of the tragic events that ultimately occurred there.

Now over 20 years later, nostalgia runs high for this pre-social media, pre-pandemic era.  A new understanding of the importance of community and connection has emerged as many feel more and more isolated.  As an artist, I aim to show the importance of human connection and bonding and how our living space and environment plays an important role in our ability to connect. I believe that community building in any form, no matter how subtle, is a staple for wellness and breeds compassion and acceptance.  Having a physical space to congregate, to safely express yourself, and feel comfortable feels harder and harder to come by as we witness many of our cherished communal spaces being bought up and redeveloped in Atlanta. The Wild Wild West End Oral History documents the importance of this warehouse complex and its tenants in developing and supporting a community of punks.