Art scene comprised of American artists active in New York’s East Village throughout the 1980s. Characterized by colorful, interdisciplinary, collaborative, and anti-establishment art and music, the East Village scene spanned the mid- to late 1970s to the mid-1980s and evolved out of a confluence of complex political and social issues. In the early 1970s, the Watergate scandal (culminating in President Nixon’s resignation in August 1974) and the winding-down of the Vietnam War (brought to an official conclusion in 1975) wreaked havoc on American internal politics, as did the global oil crisis of 1973, the ensuing recession, and high unemployment rates. In 1979 Jimmy Carter famously diagnosed a 'crisis of confidence' in the American people, and in the early 1980s escalating tensions from the Cold War, Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics, and the developing AIDS crisis further exacerbated these anxieties. Out of these tumultuous times arose the East Village scene. Artists seeking relief from inflated rents and the elitist gallery world migrated to this area of Manhattan and alternative art spaces quickly popped up, providing a host of new venues for artists seeking to experiment with art, music, and performance—but also pointedly raising issues of gentrification....