Ars Subterranea Shipyard Tea Party

Photos by Nate Dorr » Not all Ars Subterranea events are physically below the earth, but all could perhaps be described as subterranean in a broader sense. Whether holding elaborate dinner parties in abandoned grain elevators or funeral services for condemned buildings, the modern Situationist organization operates below the surface of the normal operation of New York City, peeling back the layers to reveal the strange and wonderful just out of sight. Last Sunday's tea party in one of the city's forgotten and crumbling ship graveyards was, though more informal than most Ars Subterranea events, no exception. Spreading picnic blankets on the barely stable planks of some kind of beached relic of wood and broken stone, trees and slabs of rusted metal springing up around them, the attendees sampled cakes and confections and tea sandwiches and gradually soaked in their surreal surroundings as the sun incrementally dipped towards the horizon.

Text by Nate Dorr
Posted on October 24, 2007