TYPEMultimedia performance / happening / rock show. NOT at the Factory — toured venues across the US.
CAST/PERFORMERSThe Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker) and Nico performing live. Gerard Malanga and Mary Woronov doing sadomasochistic whip dances onstage. Ingrid Superstar, Edie Sedgwick (early shows), Barbara Rubin (confrontational filmmaker). Warhol's films projected on multiple screens simultaneously onto the performers.
VENUESPremiered at the Dom (a Polish meeting hall on St. Mark's Place, NYC, April 1966). Also: The Gymnasium (NYC), The Fillmore (San Francisco, May 1966), and venues in Chicago, Detroit, and other cities.
DETAILThe very first proto-EPI event, called "Up-Tight," was staged January 13, 1966, at a dinner for the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry at the Delmonico Hotel. While the Velvets blasted and strobes flashed, Barbara Rubin shoved a camera in psychiatrists' faces asking "What does her vagina feel like? Do you eat her out?" Total chaos. Some historians consider the EPI Warhol's greatest work — more important than the paintings or films. Warhol's lights engineer Danny Williams pioneered innovations that became standard in rock concerts. Before the Velvets, Warhol tried collaborating with the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders at the Factory in 1965 but it didn't click — "the Velvets were younger and more malleable." The EPI played the Fillmore in San Francisco, where the audience — expecting hippie vibes — was hostile to the Velvets' dark, abrasive sound.

Cold War Paris — Spies, Money & Modern Art, 1947–1962