The Warm Up

Emmanuel:

Yeah.

Alrighty. Hi!

Lizzy:

My name is Lizzie.

Bobby:

Bobby Pache.

Andrea:

Hi, my name is Andrea.

Emmanuel:

Emmanuel Santos.

Emily

Emily.

Emmanuel:

And I worked with the Visitor Engagement team.

Lizzy:

Here at MoMA PS1.

Emily

So the VE team is our Visitor Engagement team. And we're here to answer your questions and talk to you about art and have fun conversations.

Bobby:

You know, talking every day, being charming, et cetera.

Andrea:

It has shown me how long I can stand for one period of time.

Emmanuel:

I'd like to be in the coat room, having a nice place to sit while I draw, and then having people come over and bring their stuff, but then also notice me drawing and just like, "oh wow, you're an artist!" I'm like, "yeah, I am."

Emily

So we're going to go on a tour together through the museum to look at some art, but also some really special spaces.

Lizzy:

Some spaces that are special to us on the VE team.

Bobby:

Cool.

Andrea:

Nailed it.

Emmanuel:

Perfect.

Emily:

All right. You want to walk over with me, you can. This is a fun, creepy corner that people are very afraid of. So we're standing in the boiler, the old boiler room of MoMA PS1 right now in front of the large boiler that was set down here in 1902. That was then gold leafed by Saul Melman back in 2010 as part of our greater New York show.

Bobby:

And you have this massive furnace...

Emily:

It's the original boiler of the room. And then it was like abandoned and not used anymore.

Bobby:

Oh, so this is a Relic. It's very old. It's still very beautiful.

Emily:

It's fun. Because it's one of the only pieces you could also like totally interact with. So like you're allowed to open all the doors. I always touch the parts that are just old and grimy and not covered in gold leaf, just because gross.

Bobby:

And if you keep on looking at it, you obviously see that it's about halfway covered in gold leafing. And this is the work of Saul Melman. You can see gold a lot in Catholic artwork around deities and it's always associated with life. So with this piece, he wanted to bring the boiler back to life. So he used gold leafing to cover the surface and he also worked as a surgeon in the emergency room. So they think that "Central Governor" got his name because of that relation. "Central Governor" means the heart.

Emily:

He named the peace "Central Governor" after this kind of idea that the boiler was the heart of the building.

Bobby:

So, well by reinvigorating the heart you can kind of bring back to life, this museum. And that's what I think he was trying to do in some way.

Emily:

The gross fun details of this piece is that he didn't use any sort of like traditional glue or water based kind of like adhesive.

Bobby:

All the gold leaving was applied with his bodily fluids. That includes sweat, blood and urine.

Emily:

He used blood, sweat and tears, like literally.

Bobby:

I would say that this is definitely one of the visitor favorites.

Emily:

If you walk over to the piece and you look at the center where you see some lights, you'll notice these test tubes filled with a white liquid.

Bobby:

There's two vials. I don't don't know what they were used for, but Saul Melman has repurposed them and inserted his semen in it.

Emily:

People have gasped. People just will like give you blank stares. People just will kind of explode in laughter.

Bobby:

Yes that sounds weird, but there's this association with life.

Emily:

I think it kind of kicks them off into a good point of understanding how many strange things are here.

Bobby:

So, many people might think it's funny, but to me it kind of makes sense. It's outlandish, but once I look at the artwork as a whole, I feel like I understand it and appreciate it.

Bobby:

My favorite piece from the museum is by Richard Artschwager, and I like it because the story behind it.

Lizzie

Before we get into the piece, I want to back up real fast and give you some history of PS1. The building we're in is almost 130 years old. It was originally a public school building, the first public school in Long Island City.

Bobby:

This school only lasted for about 60 years.

Lizzie:

It functioned as a school until the mid 20th century when it closed, because it was sort of falling apart, and there was low enrollment in Long Island City at the time.

Andrea:

And that's when Alana Hies came along with the groundbreaking idea to use these abandoned public spaces, to present contemporary art exhibitions, which would focus on the newest art trends and promote new and emerging artists.

Lizzie:

So if you can imagine the building has been abandoned for quite a few years, it's in terrible shape. The paint is peeling.

Andrea:

Rooms still have seats in them. Some had desks, some had standing water.

Lizzie:

Flooded it in different places.

Bobby:

There was dust everywhere.

Andrea:

I mean, it was that bad.

Lizzie:

The first show that opens at PS1 is called Rooms. Rooms was an opportunity for artists to kind of create within the architecture of the museum and using that as their canvas.

Andrea:

That was the architecture of the building was as important as the work, or they were equally entwined. There's really not separate. And it's because they're meant to live in the building and age with the building and be the building.

Lizzie:

But there was a very short window of time before rooms opened. It was only about six weeks from when the firm, when Allana Hies the founder signed the lease on the building to when rooms opened. So she hired, or sort of begged a lot of the artists who were in the show to help with this cleanup process. And so they were really involved in sort of getting the building clean and up to code. The museum gets noticed by city council that they won't be able to open unless they have five marked exits throughout the entire building. Richard Artschwager went back to them and said, "One of the main sort of theme of this show that we're trying to do is that you really can't tell where the art begins in the building ends and vice versa. Having these illuminated exit signs would totally take the visitor out of that space".

Bobby:

And they were like "No exit signs, no open to the public".

Lizzie:

And so he said "Fine, you want your five exit signs here they are".

Bobby:

He was like, okay, I'll give you five exit signs. So he took five light bulbs. If you look up to the ceiling, you can see them. And right now we have three on display, exit, exit, exit, and they're right after the other. They're not spread out through the museum. So this is why I find it so funny instead of spreading them out, he decided to line them up in one hallway, leading to a wall, that's not even a proper exit.

Lizzie:

And he called it one of the art pieces in the show, 'Don't fight city hall'. I really liked that story because it really speaks to sort of the good humor of the like original artists who were in the room show.

Bobby:

And I like it so much because it's petty, it's humorous. And I find that very humane. I'm a Spanish man and petty runs in our veins.

Andrea:

Now I'm going to take you into the lobby and show you a little something that you probably would miss. Most grownups normally miss this installation, but the children usually always see it. Maybe it's because they're lower to the ground and that's one of the reasons they see it, or it just could be because their heads aren't as cluttered with information as adults. But this piece can be found after you enter the front doors, if you turn left, it's between the front door and the windows. So the artist that I'm going to talk about is Pipilotti Rist.

Well, this installation, it's a little teeny tiny little video in the hole in the floor. Well, now it's really interesting because so many people when I try to point out, I don't think that they get that I'm trying to show them there's actually something installed in the floor. Now, usually it would be busier in a lobby and it would be loud and it would be hard to hear that. Where now, since it's quieter, you can hear it. And now I see more people where they're walking in and they're hearing this and they can't figure out where they're hearing the sound's coming from or the soundtrack. And you never think to look down on the floor, so I just usually like to go over and they're like, Oh" They're so surprised and it's really fun to watch that.

Emily:

Okay. Cecily's on the other side and I was like, where is she? We're standing in front of Cecily Brown's piece on the second floor in stairwell B.

Emmanuel:

I refer it to like, as a mess, but like in a really good way, like it's a really nice mess on this wall in stair B.

Emily:

The more you spend with it, the more little details you see I'm going to want to use, I always use the word orgy. Am I allowed to use that word on this?

Emmanuel:

Massive orgy of naked bodies, like a literal orgy.

Emily:

You'll notice different bodies kind of intertwined and inter tangled in each other. Predominantly these male bodies, nude, kind of interacting at interesting angles and some not the most flattering.

Emmanuel:

Whenever I talk about that piece after the Torah has had its Gables. I talk about John Berger's the Ways of Seeing. He's a big art critic, and one of the things he speaks about is the difference between nudity and nakedness. The difference between nudity and nakedness is that nakedness is like a sort of like unawareness that people are observing you while you're without clothing. And nudity is the sort of this choice of wanting to be without clothes. So like, I like to imagine that honestly, Cecily Brown was going for that sort of nudity. The figures that she's painting, they are acknowledging that they're nude, they're enjoying their nakedness. They're enjoying being observed, essentially.

Emily:

She's really interested in previous art movements like abstract expressionism and kind of the idea that those are always such male centered practices and kind of movements within the art history canon. And so she's really kind of interested in taking that kind of male gaze and that aggression that's in them and kind of flipping it on its head. So it's kind of her opportunity to take a chance to say to these abstract expressionists artists that anything they can do, she can do better and kind of using them and their bodies themselves as the stepping stone to do that. Kind of using them as her own subject matter and treating them how they've treated women in the past.

Lizzie:

So my name is Lizzie. I've been a Visitor Engagement Associate here for almost two years. My first experience at PS1 though was about four years ago at the Art Book Fair. It was still really warm, it's in September every year. And I just have this one memory of sitting out in the courtyard and air conditioning water from the window units in the offices on the third floor was like dripping on me because it was the only little square of space I could find. And just like people watching the massive crowds and I just moved to New York so I felt very cool. And so that's what I've always really loved about PS1. That's like in its bones and its history is this like alternative space. Yeah. It's a really fun place to visit and then maybe even more fun to work here.

Emily:

Hello, give me one second.

Bobby:

How do you think the sound is in here?

Emily:

Now we're standing on the third floor after exploring the William Kentridge piece. It's called Stair Procession and it's been here since 2000.

Bobby:

Once you're in this space, you have this large window that illuminates the walls and the walls are white. And then there's these black anamorphic figures. If you look closely, you can tell that it's made of construction paper, which again is a nod to [inaudible 00:00:40] being a school.

Emily:

William Kentridge grew up in South Africa, during the time of the apartheid. And his parents were lawyers that were working to help people and be able to free them from the horrors that were happening at that time. So that kind of really heavily influenced him and his artwork.

Bobby:

There's a theme of overlapping lines that kind of look like a cage. So this gate right here, which is normally used to divide the up and down, this fence, you kind of like looking at someone with a barrier between you.

Emily:

Really no matter what angle you look at the piece, you're looking at some characters through this caging of the staircase and it makes you see the dehumanization of these people during the apartheid and during this procession and movement.

Bobby:

Also, back in the day, I know it was back in school when I was a public schooler, it was divided by boys and girls. So boys had one staircase and girls had another staircase. What I really appreciate about the artist's interventions is that it really incorporate the space more than you think. It's not just artwork that's in a staircase, it's artwork that's in a staircase because it helps exemplify this feeling of segregation.

Lizzie:

Now we're standing inside underneath Meeting by James Turrell. I get asked all the time.

Bobby:

Is that really a hole in the wall?

Lizzie:

Is that a window?

Bobby:

Is there glass?

Lizzie:

Is that a door?

Bobby:

Is that a video?

Lizzie:

No. It is an actual hole in the ceiling that is open to the air, open to the elements.

Bobby:

Another question is what do you do when it rains. Of course we close it.

Emmanuel:

What's cool about it is that you get to see the sky for essentially what it is. You just see that pure color.

Bobby:

James Turrell played with line and perspective to fool your eye into making it look paper thin. The way that he did that was by shaving the plane of the ceiling to meet the edge of the hole. What he does, he frames the sky to make it look as if it's within reach, like this tranquility is in reach for you. Be happy. Who knows.

Emmanuel:

Something I often notice is that there's this crazy, intense silence that happens when I go in there with ... It doesn't matter how big the group is. Once we hit Turrell, I've always noticed that people will just, like somebody hit the mute button or something. It's always interesting because it's like, now hearing that sort of sound I guess, or lack of, it really shows this strange power that Meeting has. It demands your focus.

Bobby:

But the name of this piece is the Hole at P.S.1.

Emmanuel:

Also known as Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple.

Nora:

What is, I don't even know what the word Chthonic means.

Bobby:

Neither do I, but I'm sure we'll know after this.

Nora:

I know. I guess we'll have to look it up.

Lizzie:

We're standing in front of the Hole at P.S.1 and it looks exactly like a hole in the wall. It's sort of almond shape. But if you look really far through the hole, you can actually see a very small opening out of the actual building.

Emmanuel:

Basically, he saw this hole poking through the wall. So at one point he decided what if I just make this hole bigger? And so he did.

Lizzie:

He was sort of interested in negative space as sculpture, so shaping objects so that they would sort of make sculpture out of the space that they were in. And that's exactly what he's done with the Hole at P.S.1. The building at the time, dusty, water everywhere. Again, they were trying to clean up this building that had been abandoned for so long.

Bobby:

So if you just imagine there's no white walls, everything's darker, everything's more dirty, it's less professional. It's less clean. It's less made for the public.

Lizzie:

When the sunlight would line up perfectly with the hole, there would be this huge beam of light that would come in through this hole. It would reflect off of the dust in the air and the water on the floor. It would sort of fill the space with these particles that you couldn't see until the light was shining perfectly into the hole.

Bobby:

There's also a lot of sexual reference in this piece.

Emmanuel:

It's supposed to give the sense that you're going through a birth canal.

Bobby:

Very vaginal and phallic, phallic being with the ray of light and vaginal with the almond shape of the hole.

Lizzie:

It's shining this new light into P.S.1. and it's this sort of symbolic rebirth of the building into this new space.

Emmanuel:

Chthonic or Chthonic, however you want to pronounce it, actually means that it's relating or pertaining to the underworld. So it was him trying to break out and trying to reach maybe Olympus or just break out of the underworld altogether.

Bobby:

Hi, my name is Bobby Pache and I work with the Visitor Engagement Team here at MoMA PS1. So if I was to talk about my favorite space, it would probably not be any of these pieces I mentioned. I also really like the elevator, the elevators massive, kind of grandiose feeling. It kind of makes you feel small, even though I'm a six foot man that's 220 pounds. I feel really small on this elevator and it's because the elevator's probably the height, or maybe a little bit shorter of the actual floors. I remember one time there was a light show exhibit and they put lights in the elevator too so it had this awesome experience of the semi reflective metal material was reflecting these neon lights and you just have this fun, cute little moment in the elevator between floors.

So another artist that exhibited at MoMA PS1 was Jim Ferraro and he actually designed audio tracks to be played in the elevator, which was kind of awesome. So the visitors would come into the elevator, they would travel for a floor or two, and they'd actually be listening to some like interesting tracks curated by the artists. So it's this really nice way to like kind of enrich the experience no matter what part of the building you were in. Since we're on the elevator topic, another artist that we have to mention is this long name, Longmont Potion Castle. So the work that he inputted into the elevator was also audio, but they were prank calls. So you get into the elevator, you would just travel a floor or two and you would hear these kind of insane pranks that would be happening and you would leave the elevator laughing hysterically.