Bella Savignano

FLASH BANG is an archive devoted to the collection and preservation of subcultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The archive holds clothing, ephemera, photographs, and artwork that I collected, processed, and catalogued throughout my time at Parsons.

Artifacts from the archive and work made from facsimiles of source material were shown in the Design History and Practice thesis exhibition A Faint Annotation, at Someday Gallery in March 2024. The installation presented an alternative timeline of glam rock that centered the highly queer and political underground art scene of the early 1970s in New York City. The work examined the archivist’s place within the collection and public perceptions of cultural timelines at large.

FLASH BANG (the book) is a 60-page collection of original writings and archival material. The book features personal essays on the politics of archives and the process of exhibiting an “incomplete” history, along with research essays on the history of glam rock, the New York art underground, and Lisa Robinson’s CREEM column, “Eleganza.” Interspersed are photos of ephemera from the FLASH BANG archive, documentation of the exhibition, and images of important subjects in the research. It was hand-bound in a limited edition with a note by Sarah Nicholls.

*I have obtained permission to use the images in my project that I do not own.