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  • A Gathering of the Tribes

    A Gathering of the Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective. Located on the Lower East Side of New York City, Tribes has been in existence since 1991.


  • A Gathering of the Tribes, 285 East 3rd St, 2nd Floor (between Avenues C and D)
    Phone: 212-674-3778
    Fax: 212-674-5776
    Email: Info@tribes.org


  • Tribes is a member of Chamber Music of America, Poets & Writers, Poets Society of America, St. Marks Poetry Project. We are Funded by NYC DCA, NYSCA & The Andy Warhol Foundation among others. All contributions are tax deductible.

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  • The 16th Annual Charlie Parker Festival

    Throughout the forties, Charlie Parker revolutionized jazz and immortalized the Lower East Side by capturing its combustive atmosphere and translating it into music. It is no wonder that every year the Lower East Side returns a little bit of the favor by celebrating Charlie Parker, his life and his legacy, as well as his deep rooted relationship with this neighborhood, through A Gathering of the Tribes' Charlie Parker Festival.
    This year, A Gathering of the Tribes is please to present the 16th Annual Charlie Parker Festival, entitled "BIRD LIVES," from August 2 - August 29. More information about this year's festival can be found here

Latest Reviews

Ernest Hemingway (A Review of Tao Lin’s Richard Yates)

Since I have like three venues to publish it in, and I told Tao I needed a galley, I feel obliged to write a review of Tao Lin’s novel, Richard Yates. I don’t think I will ever read anything by Richard Yates. Reading Tao Lin has a way of erasing any literary knowledge […]


Just Kids, a Memoir by Patti Smith: “Because of Robert”

Reviewed by K.A. Sitafalwalla

Partially a proclamation to the 1970’s, the artists and the derelicts, the rich and poor, the talented and talent-less, “Just Kids” stands as an ode to friendship and love; everything in between. Patti Smith’s memoir is poetic and true with an honesty and straightforwardness that is disguised in her poetry and music. […]


I Need That Record Store: Retail as Club Membership

by Kurt Gottschalk

I first heard about it when I was about 12 — a store where Kiss albums could be procured for about a dollar less than at the mall; a store that, strangely, wasn’t in the mall. It wasn’t far, but it did mean asking my mother to make another trip.

Things seemed different at […]


Whitney Biennial 2010

By Vedan Anthony-North

With a name like “2010” you don’t really know what to expect when heading to the 2010 Whitney biennial. Unfortunately, you don’t really know what to think about the exhibit after leaving either. Though the theme of “2010” is justified by the curators Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari in the exhibit’s […]


THE LATEST FROM OILSPILLVILLE

By : Brian Boyles, New Orleans
It was getting a little too possible, you know? That we might make it, that whatever the forces leveled at our survival, they were internal, fixable, matters of fairness or racial understanding or budgeting. We could do that, couldn’t we? The Saints won, didn’t they? […]



Latest Poetry

In Church with Branded Knees

by Ayshia Stephenson
I don’t want him to tear my clothing off anymore. I don’t want him to crush my serenity
into this tiny spit of a paper ball, pit stuck in my throat, like it sits in a child who can not
say: please get it out. Branded knees need a buffer from a pebbled surface. Can […]


The Reunion: A Forecast by Suejin Suh

 
The Reunion: A Forecast                                                                           by Suejin Suh
 
 
Has it been more than three years?  Three or four years-ish since you cleverly sang,  
At the airport, we’ll cross paths walking, walking towards opposite ends/ like almostly- forgotten lovers who had seeming common sense.” (They lusted. Lusted incensed.)
 
Or was this an impromptu melody I made just […]



Latest Essays

UNPOP curatorial statement

by Janet Bruesselbach
“A free society is one in which it is safe to be unpopular.” –Adlai Stevenson
Unpop has a variety of playful reactions to both art as commodity and the political legacy of pop art. Art is a commodity so oversupplied that it may be the testing grounds for a post-scarcity economy. Its economy of […]


Off-Off-Broadway in Mumbai

by Howard Pflanzer
How can you produce a brand new controversial American play in Mumbai?  I thought India would be an excellent place to produce and direct my new play, The Terrorist, a timely commentary on the US government policy of detention of South Asians and Muslims and the initiation of […]



Latest Fiction

Ernest Hemingway (A Review of Tao Lin’s Richard Yates)

Since I have like three venues to publish it in, and I told Tao I needed a galley, I feel obliged to write a review of Tao Lin’s novel, Richard Yates. I don’t think I will ever read anything by Richard Yates. Reading Tao Lin has a way of erasing any literary knowledge […]


Gone Fishing, Again

by Christopher Heffernan

The cult classic Trout Fishing in America, written by Richard Brautigan and first published in 1967, has been released in a new edition by Mariner Books, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.  The book has not been published on its own since the early ‘80’s when […]



Latest Videos

A Starter Kit for Collectors: Exposition et vente au profit de TRIBES

A Starter Kit for Collectors: Exposition et vente au profit de A Gathering of the Tribes
Samedi 1er mai – Dimanche 16 mai 2010
Vernissage: Samedi 1er mai 14-18H
Réception pour les artistes : Samedi 1er mai, 19h-22H
Tribes Gallery
285 East 3rd Street, 2ème étage, NYC 10009
A Gathering of the Tribes est une association artistique et culturelle qui […]


A Starter Kit for Collectors: Art Exhibition and Sale A Benefit for A Gathering of the Tribes

A Gathering of the Tribes is an arts and cultural organization dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective. Located on the Lower East Side of New York City, Tribes has been in existence since 1991.   tribes-poster-color.jpg
Saturday May 1st, 2:00 - 6:00 pm : Public preview
Saturday May 1st, 7:00 – 10:00 pm […]


Review of “Divine Intervention”

“Divine Intervention”

a film by Elia Suleiman

reviewed by Mike Lee

A surreal, depressing look into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told from a militant, overly intellectualized Palestinian perspective using wildly sardonic humor, brutally honest irony within a disjointed plot that at times is somewhat maddening but always surprising.

“Divine Intervention” opens with a sequence interpreted in a myriad of ways, depending on one’s ideology: in a blatantly Bunuelistic turn a group of feralized children hunt down and murder Santa Claus on a hill overlooking Nazareth; a man unapologetically dumps his garbage into his neighbor’s yard whilst in another scene a pleasant old man happily waves at passers-by as he mumbles hilarious obscene commentary regarding them. Another individual decides to battle the local cops, tossing bottles from his roof in a desperate chaos. This sequence reminded me of what my grandfather used to say about not crying when the dog you’ve been beating bites the hell out of you-and in Suleiman’s film, there’s no group of dogs ornerier than West Bank Palestinians, obviously.

The main plot concerns a relatively young man (played by Suleiman himself) visiting his father and later spending an afternoon with his girlfriend, who due to Israeli Army restrictions and roadblocks are able only to pass the time together in his car, parked at a vacant lot, holding hands with the passion of unhappy school children. Here, “Divine Intervention” becomes a story of love physically denied, and the extremes to which romantic desire and nationalist politics become intertwined in a time of an unyielding conflict. However, Suleiman fails to follow this up, instead tying this plot strand to video game fantasy, hopelessly exhausting an opportunity to tell a story. This film also conveys a stultifying claustrophobia; one gets the impression the entire West Bank is a Southern backwoods steel cage match with barbed wire wrapped about the ring and flaming pillars. While this approach is often heavy-handedly sententious, “Divine Intervention” makes no excuses for its point of view or attempts any pretensions in compromising its radical Palestinian nationalist viewpoint. However, there seems to be an unintended consequence in the process of viewing “Divine Intervention”: while the Israelis portrayed are cartoon baddies, the Palestinian characters are hardly developed beyond cut-outs and plot devices. This slight makes it hard to like anyone in the film.