Bang in BK

Herman Bang (1857 - 1912) was a leading Danish impressionist author of his time. In 1880, Bang published his first novel, Families Without Hope, (Haabløse Slægter) where a young man enters a relationship with an older woman. The book was considered obscene at the time and was banned. Later, Bang was outed by his contemporaries’ as homosexual and went through a public smear campaign. Bang often wore makeup and was a decadent personality. Authors like Thomas Mann secretly admired him. Jean Baudrillard said to be a “dandy” was "an aesthetic form of nihilism.“  Herman Bang died in 1912 on a train in Ogden, Utah, in the US; he was on a world tour.  The Union Pacific Overland train was heading from Chicago to San Francisco. 

Bang in Brooklyn portrays the Danish author in different locations in Brooklyn. The piece references David Wojnarowicz’s project Arthur Rimbaud in New York from 1978-79. The piece features Bang in the urban settings reveling the demographic changes and bourgeois living of contemporary New York City.