It was a madhouse with the expected right-out-of-an-American-Apparel-ad hipster garbage, but we pushed through and made the rounds. This was a clear collection of high highs and low lows. Although I normally love anything with Ryan Trecartin attached to it, his work with a collection of artists with TELFAR, did not keep my attention. Although I don't know how it could when within earshot was Cheryl and American Apparel's room with booming Daft Punk music. Inside, you found a dance party mixed with a make-shift behind-the-runway makeup room. Guests to the museum were getting elobrate and crazy hair and makeup done and then many hung out to dance. It seemed a little provincial, but since it was Halloween and American Apparel - I got over my pretentiousness and moved on.
I was most excited to get to the second floor to see Rashaad Newsome and Ryan McNamara. Newsome's performance with Alexander Wang wasn't starting till 5pm, so we had about 20 minutes to hit McNamara and Rob Pruitt with Marc Jacobs - both great collaborations. One of the best parts about this event (as I don't know what else to call it) was the gorilla feel as you'd walk through some rooms with no idea what was going on, but since we had a time limit, I kept going.
Rob Pruitt with Marc Jacobs created an immediate runway show with guests of the museum walking down a made-up runway and then transitioning to the next room to see "live" shots of a Marc Jacobs show, where you are coming down the runway. It was a great way to use current digital media.
Ryan McNamara with Robert Geller "You Can Dance" had different timed dance lessons with guests also being able to join in on the lesson. Ryan was there as well as a dance instructor (both who obviously had visited the Cheryl/American Apparel space). I am not sure I loved this piece, but I did really enjoy watching how guests interacted with Ryan and the instructor. Some just enjoyed themselves while others really worked hard for perfect steps and ending up on their butt - twice people fell in the 90 minutes we were there, this was the first. The sunlight pouring into the space definitely changing the way I perceived it.
We rushed over to Newsome's side of the museum to wait the 20 minutes for the doors to open. The piece he was doing was an updated version of 2009's Shade Composition. The piece (video clip below) included about 12 men and women acting as a chorus with Newsome the conductor. The singers were also on stage, giving you as much attitude as they could. It was really wonderful and totally worth the wait. It made you think of language and the way we express ourselves. When I got home I watched the original version of this performance on Newsome's website. I totally loved the version at PS1 as there was mixed race and gender plus a whole lot more sass.
After Newsome, we only had 30 minutes to make it through everything else. We rushed up to the third floor to watch the meditative piece by Brody Condon with Rodarte. With touching rods, five performers moved throughout the space without letting the ends separate. It was very intoxicating but we had to move on.
We made it just in time to watch Olaf Breuning pour paint all over a model in a Cynthia Rowley dress. We couldn't get a good view of the model, but the noise on paint splashing all over her was by itself amazing. The model walked away covered in grey paint as an assistant helped her to the next room. Before she could make it, the barefoot model slipped and took the assistant with her. Everyone was ok, but it was amazing as Olaf said it had not happened before and it was clearly the last pour of the weekend. The dresses and other pieces seen below came out really beautiful. This collaboration seemed so obvious, but provided something new, surprising and beautiful.
We ran through the performance pieces on the ground floor. Artist Tauba Auerbach's performance piece had a troop of women on the floor which we had to step over as we kept moving (I think at that moment my boyfriend wanted to kill me for my impatient nature). But we moved on to another performance by Jonah Bokaer in an all black masked Narcisco Rodriguez one piece. It was a dark room and he made slow movements on a black box. I wish we could have stayed longer, but it was already 5:55 and we had to go.
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