Prentice Hall Literature--Timeless Voices, Timeless Themes--Gold Level

The Brooklyn Immersionists were a community of artists, musicians and writers that moved beyond the distancing aesthetics of postmodernism and immersed themselves and their audiences in the world where they lived. First emerging in the late 1980s and coming to fruition in the 1990s, the experimental scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn catalyzed the largest New York renaissance to take root outside Manhattan. Rejecting the cloistering of the arts into disciplinary siloes, and stressing local vitality over the curatorial priorities of Manhattan, the Immersionists created fully dimensional experiences in the streets, rooftops and abandoned warehouses. Unlike the artificial immersion of digital media, and installation art that is walled off in a museum or gallery, the Brooklyn Immersionists cultivated rich webs of connection across disciplines and with their entire neighborhood. The dynamic, post-postmodern culture played a critical role in revitalizing Williamsburg’s deteriorating industrial waterfront and spread a wave of environmental enchantment to Bushwick, DUMBO, and throughout Brooklyn.