Bungee Space
A small but big art book store in NYC
Lower East Side, Manhattan is a neighborhood that's full of raw, edgy graffiti and glitzy rooftop bars where influencers hang out. This is where you'll find "Bungee space", a small art bookstore that blends seamlessly into the neighborhood. Although the bookstore has only been open for a year and a half, it is literally a fusion of various genres, including art books focused on image research and criticism, unique fashion items by emerging designers, and a cafe where you can enjoy matcha lattes made by a Japanese tea master. Millennial / Generation Z owner Shisi Huang uses social media and internet searches to find independent publishers and up-and-coming artists and create a venue for them. For her, it's the sum of her favorite things and an incubator where everyone can grow together.
A variety of businesses in a small space. What exactly is a "bungee space"?
An art bookstore is a centerpiece, for sure. We serve coffee, showcase clothes and jewelry from emerging designers, and host exhibitions of artists that commercial galleries haven't discovered. When a new book is released, they host book concerts. In short, it's a multicultural space.
Out of all the different neighborhoods in New York, why did you choose this neighborhood?
I ran a bookstore in the East Village for two years before coming to LES. I was working alone for about two-thirds of the time, and it was a lot of hard work, but it was a way for me to finally get a feel for the city since I didn't have any ties to it. Then, after closing the shop during the pandemic, I was wandering around my favorite neighborhoods in Lower Manhattan and found this space that used to be a barbershop. At first, I thought it might be too quiet and not on the main street, but the owner was friendly and the neighborhood had a great vibe. From the paint job to the bookshelves, I did everything myself. The large hangers with clothes on them were from a laundromat that was going out of business.
Bungee space: It's a name you'll never forget. How did you come up with it?
Everyone asks me about the name anyway. (Laughs) I have a personal interest in bungee jumping and bungee cords. Stretchy and strong with a special weave, bungee cords are a safety device that can turn a potentially fatal moment into a once-in-a-lifetime experience. When we first opened, we had a table made of bungee cords and hid them throughout the space as hints. It's also a reference to my personal project 'Bungee Project in Canal street', which gave me a reason to be in the city when I was thinking about returning to Beijing. It was an event where we opened up the space to different artists, one a day for a month, to showcase their work, whether it was through exhibitions, talks, or performances.
The lion-esque logo is also interesting.
We asked the artist Dylan Jones, who is currently exhibiting at the show. He's an old internet friend of mine, and I liked his dreamy, chaotic style, so I explained what we were trying to do with here. The logo we got back was a little bizarre, but it's our style. It's neither a lion nor a dog, but an imaginary monster giving birth to another face. The idea of being unstructured and constantly creating something new was perfect for us.
Shisi Huang, the owner of Bungee SpaceIt's hard not to talk about 3 standard stoppage studio (3SS), the organization that opened Bungee Space and of which you are a part. Taking the title of Marcel Duchamp's work of the same name, 3SS was founded in 2016 by two friends who studied studio art in graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute. How did you come together and what roles do you each play?
The three of us were all international students from China, in the same age group in the late 1980s, and in the same major. I was interested in photography and installation, Nanxi was interested in video art and documentary, and Xiao was interested in photography and theory. Whenever we met, we would talk about our favorite things like books, design, and photography rather than about our careers after graduation. Eventually, we came up with the idea of creating an art studio where we would introduce art books, buy pieces from emerging designers, and organize exhibitions. We started a podcast about our favorite things and ran a small bookstore for about two years. But the cost of living in the big-tech city of San Francisco had skyrocketed beyond our means, and our foot traffic was limited. Even though we had a great clientele, including art directors from Apple, creatives from other tech companies, and art school professors and students (laughs), we realized that the customer base was too similar to grow the business. In the end, we chose cities with chaos and diversity, so my two friends left for Beijing and opened ‘Postpost’ in April 2019, and I came to New York and opened Bungee Space after several attempts. Basically, we focused on selections that best represented our cities and stayed in constant contact to share ideas about overall operations, book curation, and newsletters.
The website is very modern and artistic, who designed it?
Initially, the three of us designed it together. We all grew up with Tumblr, Instagram, and other image-oriented platforms, so we decided to make the site image-centric. I think it looks unfinished, and the way each personality stands out is a bit nostalgic for the early days of the Internet. Nowadays, we have different designers create different logos for each content. It takes a lot of work and patience, but I think a typical design is enough for a coffee menu. (Laughs)
Among other genres, your art book curation focuses on image studies & criticism. Is there a particular reason for this?
Photography is a pure interest of mine, and it's a medium that opened my eyes to the world of independent art publishing. Anything can be photographed: food, architecture, music, etc. But when you get into image study and criticism, it's more about research and discovery of the object. For example, let's say you have a photo album of lighthouses in the United States and China. If you put it in the context of a comparative analysis of the history and use of lighthouses in each country, their similarities and differences, you have an image study-critique. Or you can find similarities between completely different objects, like a flower pot and a bomb. I'm fascinated by the fact that you can weave almost anything in the world into a new perspective.
Are there any selection criteria that you look for besides the image category?
First of all, I'm very hard on myself when it comes to selecting and displaying books because of space limitations. I've never prioritized the newest or best-selling books. We prioritize books that we've read and liked or are interested in, even if they're not big sellers. In particular, all three of us value books that are topical. For example, during the height of the China-Hong Kong conflict, we introduced a variety of books from around the world about the harms of authoritarianism, including books about the Chinese Communist Party and reports from Belgium's 19th-century colonization of Africa. All of them are critiques of the status quo, and all of them are image-driven.
Where do you find these gems?
It started with our school library in San Francisco. It was almost a haven for us book lovers. The librarians were always willing to show us out-of-print books, first editions, etc. and the professors were very informative about the different publishers. From there, I did more research, and over the course of seven years, I was able to compile a list of independent publishers around the world.
What do you think is the appeal of art books?
The freedom. I think it's the freedom for anyone to publish their own point of view with images, in any medium, in any way they want. You don't have to follow traditional publishing methods, and you can use photos from your phone.
If you could recommend one book to someone new here, what would it be?
One book is too difficult (laughs). <Toilets a go go!>", a photographic documentation of the appearance of public restrooms in Japan, is a book that anyone can see, and <Una Piscina Geopolítica> (A Geopolitical Pool), a photographic archive of more than 20,000 public swimming pools in Spain, a water-scarce country, also raises questions. <Solitary>, a collection of writers invited to a retreat center in Hongcheon, South Korea, designed as a prison, is also interesting.
Art books are perhaps a good alternative to collecting artwork. Do you have a favorite art book or artist?
Most art books are limited editions, so they become more profitable over time, which is an incentive to collect them. Just like artworks. However, I am critical of art book collecting as an investment. I think a pure pleasure, inspiration, ideas, etc. that you get from looking at a book is more important than the money. In that sense, all the books here are valuable, but I would say <Tarantismo: Odyssey of an Italian Ritual>, which documents a local superstition/ritual in a village in southern Italy where a black spider bite spreads a mysterious disease that causes people to dance like crazy, and then they recover by playing certain music. The book and the LP containing the music are highly collectible as a set.
It's been said that MZs are more interested in art these days than other generations, but how does it feel to be in the middle of New York City, where there's so much art from all walks of life?
I wouldn't say that younger people are more interested because we have so many different backgrounds coming in, and older adults, and professors are our main customer base and actual buyers. (Laughs.) Whether it's architects from a nearby architectural firm, law students interested in photography, Canadian government employees interested in art books who stumbled upon us on Instagram, or regulars who just come in to pick up coffee, we have a wide variety of people from all over New York and the world who are interested in different reasons, and it's very gratifying and exciting.
Bungee Space embraces and showcases a variety of genres as art. What do you consider 'art' and what do you get out of it?
I think art is a medium that keeps me thinking. I rarely have time to go to exhibitions or events these days because I have so much going on here, but the most recent movie I watched that made me feel very depressed was ‘Tory and Lokita’, which is about a brother and sister who come to Belgium from Africa to seek asylum and face terrible discrimination. It's not directly related to art in general, but it made me think about the discourse and issues we're working on.
Besides running this space, how do you enjoy art?
I don't really write a blog or post on Instagram because I put everything into Bungee Space (laughs). I just talk to my friends about it.
New York is home to a number of art bookstores that are history in their own right. What do you think makes Bungee Space stand out from others?
First of all, we don't just have books. We have coffee, we have fashion items, and we have an art book archive! It's a place where there are a lot of things going on all the time that can pique people's curiosity. And with the money we make from all these different things, you can trust that we're going to use it to keep discovering and investing in great books.
What role do you hope this space will play in the future?
I would like it to be a space where various opinions are exchanged. It's not just about selling a book or two, it's about creating new thoughts and discourses that go beyond books. I also want it to be a place where anyone can drop in, regardless of race, age, background, or education. I would also be happy if someone who wasn't interested in books became interested in books through this space!
Bungee Space @bungee.space
Editor @_formiro
Photographer @andrewchalence
This Interview is for <SERIES> magazine spring/summer 2023
All rights reserved.
