June 20th: Alexandra Auder in conversation with Chelsea Spengemann
Presented by 192 Books and Paula Cooper Gallery, Alexandra Auder will discuss her new book Don’t Call Me Home: A Memoir with Chelsea Spengemann.
This event will take place live at 192 Books at 192 10th Avenue, between 21st and 22nd street, on Tuesday, June 20th at 7 PM ET. Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
Alexandra Auder — Don’t Call Me Home: A Memoir (Published by Viking, 2023)
A moving and wickedly funny memoir about one woman's life as the daughter of a Warhol superstar and the intimate bonds of mother-daughter relationships
Alexandra Auder's life began at the Chelsea Hotel—New York City's infamous bohemian hangout--when her mother, Viva, a longtime resident of the hotel and one of Andy Warhol's superstars, went into labor in the lobby. These first moments of Alexandra's life, documented by her filmmaker father, Michel Auder, portended the whirlwind childhood and teen years that she would go on to have.
At the center of it all is Viva: a glamorous, larger-than-life woman with mercurial moods, who brings Alexandra with her on the road from gig to gig, splitting time between a home in Connecticut and Alexandra's father's loft in 1980s Tribeca, then moving back again to the Chelsea Hotel and spending summers with Viva's upper-middle-class, conservative, hyperpatriarchal family of origin.
In Don't Call Me Home, Alexandra meditates on the seedy glory of being raised by two counterculture icons, from walking a pet goat around Chelsea and joining the Squat Theatre company to coparenting her younger sister, Gaby, with her mother and partying in East Village nightclubs. Flitting between this world and her present-day life as a yoga instructor, actress, mother, wife, and much-loved Instagram provocateur, Alexandra weaves a stunning, moving, and hilarious portrait of a family and what it means to move away from being your mother's daughter into being a person of your own.
Alexandra Auder is a writer and actor. Born in New York City to mother Viva, a Warhol superstar, and father Michel Auder, an award-winning filmmaker who directed Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol. Alexandra has been a featured character in HBO’s High Maintenance and has acted in the films of Wim Wenders and Jodie Foster, among others. She resides in Philadelphia with her two children and husband, filmmaker Nick Nehez, with whom she co-produces and collaborates.
Chelsea Spengemann is an Independent Curator and Co-Founder of Soft Network. Since 2008, she has been an integral part of the estate of Stan VanDerBeek. As the Director of the Stan VanDerBeek Archive, she oversees installations and acquisitions of VanDerBeek’s multimedia work as well as the preservation of VanDerBeek’s films. In 2019 Spengemann co-curated VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, NC and co-founded the professional resource group AFELL (Artist’s Foundations and Estate Leaders’ List). She was the curator for Becoming Disfarmer in 2014 and the Instant as Image in 2016, both for the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase; and in 2009 she organized FLOAT at Socrates Sculpture Park. Her writing has appeared in Afterimage, Affidavit, and Art Journal Open. She has an MA in Art History from Purchase College and an MFA in Photography from ICP/Bard College.