MY TURN / SEBOUH GEMDJIAN

Requiem for Space 234

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner

THE MAN won, but who was fighting? Pilgrims to Highland Park, the land of the free-range radical, looking forward to a pit stop to charge their activist and anarchist expression needs, will be disappointed to see that Space 234 has turned the lights off and locked the doors. An amazing self-sustaining institution that supported itself for six months on retailing donation priced pop art and propaganda has crash-landed into the hard bottom line.

Chop, chop, American shop: The Gearjammers perform in front of Space 234 last summer. The gallery/store/stage succeeded in sparking some vibrant debate during its brief tenure. [Aparna Rishi]

Space 234 had a kind of a Howard-Sternesque allure: the like minded stopped by to see what Sarah Wellington and company were up to next. Those offended by the banners and windows -- "Your Money is Supporting Genocide in Iraq" -- did not want to stop by, but they simply had to see what Sarah Wellington and company were up to next. The place had a sort of unifying innocence to its fervor.

So why did they run out of money? Because Wellington did not really seem to believe in money. "I believe in manifesting my own reality," she had said. "I am working on manifesting a reality that has no war, and has no military, and has no borders, and no racism. That's a lie, that's not going to happen overnight, but I will work towards those goals. Human beings lie to themselves every morning when they wake up. "

Sarah Wellington, you will be missed indeed. This writer, for one, agrees; and hopes that the rest of Highland Park will join him in doing everything possible to bring this institution back.

The borough, however, is suing Wellington for having operated as a gallery while having a retail store license. Apparently lurking in the details of a retail store license is that if more than 34 percent of the merchandise is art, the space is considered a gallery.

Another bottom line is that to the many local middle-aged ex-radicals, Space 234 represented innocence. A nice place to visit, but they would not live there. They may as well continue to pay their activist dues at Marc's Place Coffeehouse once a month.

But the past never leaves us - there is always a natural reaction when the balance shifts. So perhaps someone will step up. Perhaps now is the time to invest in youth and ideals. Because this writer knows, as you know that you know: we all really do lie to ourselves in the morning, in order to decide just what is art and what is business as usual.