Courtesy of MARSH
When the owners of the L & S Broadway Cafe decided to shutter their classic greasy spoon in the Carondelet neighborhood, they did so quickly and without moving a lot of the evidence of their business. For the better part of a decade, ketchup packets and sugar canisters sat on tables, dishes were left in cupboards, vinyl booths collected dust instead of diners. By the time the building began to undergo a rehabilitation process in early 2018, the new inhabitants found a relatively intact diner inside, but also some oddities (a room filled entirely with various forms of wood) and some second-floor residential areas that were slowly eroding.
Luckily, the buildings, covering two storefronts/addresses and three second-story apartments on South Broadway, found a new life, thanks to an emerging collective called MARSH, or Materializing and Activating Radical Social Habitus. As described on their meticulously detailed website, the members of MARSH began the process of demolition and rebuilding in early 2018, through a “muscular bonding project,” which predated the arrival of a labyrinth-style garden in the backyard, using the principles of permaculture farming. Work on the second-floor residences continued throughout the 2018, with much of that hoarded wood used for flooring. Over 4 tons of rubble were removed from the building before all was said and done.
A co-founder of MARSH, Beth Neff says that “we were particularly interested in this part of the city and this building was within our budget. I had sold a farm and took those funds to purchase and renovate it; property is somewhat inexpensive here. We were extremely excited about the kitchen facility, and it’s also allowed us a place to live, as well as the performance space. The thing that was a little disconcerting was the second floor. Realtors will show you the absolute worst first, and whole walls were missing. But the thing is, the building was structurally sound and didn’t require any renovation that we didn’t think we could do. Whether that was ambitious or crazy, I don’t know.”
With the building secured and spaces coming into focus, the collective’s mission(s) began to come into further focus.
In total, the resident-members of the MARSH collective—currently including Neff, her daughter Esther Neff, and Kaia Gilje—plan to address three distinct, overarching types of work within the space and its expansive yard. Each component is given a deeper dive on the MARSH website, but they’re basically summed up under the titles: “CULTURE (perfomance, gathering + project space); PROVISION (co-operative diner + kitchen, garden site); HABITAT (residency, emergency + transitional housing).”
Of the performance space, Esther Neff says that “we’re looking at forms of cultural practice that can involve food and social justice and community organizing as part of performance. A lot of artists are already working in practices like this. In terms of gatherings and events, we’ll have open mics. We’ll bridge the high/low art divides in dance, theater, performance art; Kaia and I have done visual arts, performance, and dance. The space will be participatory and a good use of the site.”
As that particular room has come together to near-completion, a quick tour of the performance space shows a room with an open feel and no stage, which the curators believe will reinforce notions of blurs between audience and performers.
While other live-music-friendly spaces have cropped up along this blended industrial/residential stretch of South Broadway in recent years—à la the Livery Company and The Sinkhole—MARSH’s approach to a performance space will differ from the norm.
As evidenced by this paragraph: “Situated as a bio-cultural life-art laboratory, MARSH involves practices and projects that perform intentional entanglements between personal, social, political and biotic elements of life. Art, food, labor, shelter, and thought are particularly investigated through integrated creative projects, food and land relationships, and forms of practical, intentional (in)habitation. The performance and gathering space, design-build studio space, the grounds, and apartments are open for use by neighborhood residents and local, national and international artists across disciplines. MARSH is home-base to PPL (a thinktank, collective and organizational entity) an annual Bioculturealities Symposium and Performance Festival, and the nomadic platform PERFORMANCY FORUM.”
Noted up top is the fact that the site will include a diner. On South Broadway, the images of such a space have been held up by diners like the recently shuttered Kickers Corner, which featured big old plates of comfort food. At MARSH, the diner will be collectively owned and operated. A May 11 meeting at the space will allow those interested to take part in a planning meeting. The end result could see multiple kitchen managers/chefs running different days of operations. While some members of the collective will cook, clean, serve, and otherwise run the diner, others might be involved through purchase shares in a food co-op, or through work hours spent on-site in other tasks at living-wage levels of compensation.
And some of the ingredients are hoped to be grown on-site. Beth Neff, whose varied life has included everything from farming to writing a young adult book, says that “the gardens will be based on permaculture, which often incorporates forestry techniques. Trees and shrubs and garden plants are all found at different levels, with design imitative of natural systems.
