Lou Reed, the 20th Century is over

It’s hard to find references about which many of us agree, and even more one that people from so many different ambits of culture are in agreement about. Lou Reed is one of these references. And he’s a reference that at A*DESK we think we all share, collaborators, readers and friends. From Lou Reed we learnt things that just aren’t taught in those universities of the arts. For example, the inevitable connection between creators from different areas, and how an absurd (economic) division means that we only sometimes talk about musicians, poets or artists. The Velvet Underground was Andy Warhol, just as Sonic Youth was Mike Kelley, etc. But, Lou Reed also appears as a trace of what was left by the 20th century, a trace of an idea of what the 20th century could have or wanted to be. His death has ultimately taken us by surprise, as he actually lived forty or fifty years longer than one might have foreseen. But this would have been the price for taking the risk, for seeking out the longed for, almost nostalgic, possibility of uniting art and life,with the latter being taken to its extremes. We leave you, in memory, with one of the most nostalgic videos that we could find, a short piece of film from the Factory with the Velvet.