He made the notorious film Ecstatic Stigmatic. He designed punk jewellery worthy of Westwood. He played in a ‘perfect’ band with Lydia Lunch. Now a newly discovered archive is casting new light on this star of the New York demimonde
Gordon Stevenson was a mover and a shaker within late-70s New York, back when the city was, in the words of photographer Julia Gorton, “a nihilistic playground for people with trauma”. Tall, rail-thin, hair cut into a severe widow’s peak, Stevenson was an artist, jewellery designer, musician and the auteur behind one of no wave cinema’s most notorious works, Ecstatic Stigmatic.
Four decades after his death, however, he’s best remembered as a footnote in other people’s stories. That’s all about to change, however, with the discovery of a storage unit full of his lost work, including jewellery, collaborations with mail-art pioneer Ray Johnson, and even clues to the whereabouts of a surviving print of Ecstatic Stigmatic. Meanwhile, his family have recovered hundreds of letters Stevenson wrote to his parents, chronicling life in his downtown demimonde and his experiences as one of New York’s first Aids patients.
