PUNKS AT DAWN, OR AN ODE TO VIVIENNE Gabrielle Scott
Shot entirely at dawn with Super 8, “Punks at Dawn” ruminates on the No Wave aesthetics of Vivienne Dick. Mimicking the baby-faced badass Lydia Lunch, the black robed “school girl” lazily beats around Pilsen, aimless and bored. An often forgotten island unto itself, Pilsen is a nostalgic limbo land between Downtown and the South Side of Chicago. She wanders like a delinquent between an apocalyptic nowhere place in the old decayed warehouses and empty lot fields with towering religious murals and tired city streets. A community absent.
“Smog mirage, heat collapses.
Swollen rotten beams with strays and feral ones.
Dumpster liquor like sea glass treasures.
Cat gardens and broken cement caves align 21st St.
No salt shores in the garden city.
Beaten backyard bars. But we don’t hold,
No Wave memorabilia aged in city waste time.
And black like Lydia Lunch.”