What was it like to be an artist in 1970s SoHo? How did you spend your evenings? Where did you go for coffee, or to see your friends perform? In We Owned Downtown, Performa founding director and chief curator RoseLee Goldberg and Curator-at-Large Defne Ayas invite audiences to step into the energies of New York’s downtown art scene of the 1970s. Together, participants will learn about a neighborhood that was transformed from a deserted industrial district into a unique urban setting by hundreds of artists living in close walking distance from one another; painters, performers, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, choreographers, musicians and writers. Walking the streets today means meeting friendly ghosts outside every building, remembering conversations, feeling the past in every step, being intensely present in the city that never stops reinventing itself.