By Jillian Hillaris
Wading pools, sand boxes, squeals of delight, parents jostling for space beneath shady trees, lines for ping-pong and chess: On its face, it appears to be a summertime scene at a local playground — except there’s beer and experimental live music. It’s a summer Saturday at MoMA PS1, the contemporary art museum in Long Island City.
Every summer, PS1 transforms its courtyard into a lively venue for its critically acclaimed music series, Warm Up. The 2011 opening weekend kicked off July 2 with spectacular weather and an impressive lineup. The festival has surged on every Saturday and will continue through Sept. 3.
Tucked away in Long Island City, PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Ave. is one of the oldest and largest nonprofit contemporary art institutions in the United States. It presents more than 50 exhibitions each year, including artists’ retrospectives, site-specific installations, historical surveys, and a full schedule of music and performance programming. Now celebrating its 14th year, the outdoor Warm Up series continues its tradition of introducing audiences to experimental live music, sound, performance and DJs.
Eliza Ryan, curatorial assistant at the museum, said, “The music selection is an organic process of brainstorming artists and/or performances that would complement each other in an outdoor music festival, but (also a process) in taking risks and experimenting with a complex range of sounds or areas of music.”
This year’s Warm Up marks the second year that the series was conceived by a curatorial committee representing a wide range of knowledge and expertise in music, sound and the performing arts. Selected by MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach and organized by Ryan, the Warm Up 2011 committee includes Dean Bein, head of True Panther Sounds; Kris Chen, head of A&R at XL Recordings; Robin Carolan, head of Tri Angle Records; Jonathan Galkin, co-founder of DFA Records; Brandon Stosuy, senior writer for Stereogum and contributing editor for The Believer; and Matt Werth, label head of RVNG International.
“We selected this specific group of music curators — most of whom we worked with last summer on Warm Up — based on great experiences working with them in the past in different capacities within MoMA and MoMA PS1 and equally because of their specific and unique interests in music or the direction of their artists and label,” Ryan said.
Featured local artists include Gang Gang Dance (DJ Set), Omar-S, DJ Pierre, Sun Araw, Black Dice, Four Tet, Tanlines, Grimes, Syd Tha Kyd / OFWGKTA, His name is alive, and Nguzunguzu. Additional highlights from the series include a line up of international DJs and live music ensembles: DJ Harvey, Groove Collective, Afrika Bambaataa, Mad Professor, Richie Hawtin, Francois K, Fischerspooner, Kid Koala, Arto Lindsay, Scissor Sisters and Luke Vibert among them.
An architectural installation by the winner of the annual Young Architects Program — organized by MoMA’s Chief Curator of Architecture and Design Barry Bergdoll and Director Biesenbach — provides both an immersive environment and interactive backdrop to the festivities. Each year, Warm Up not only brings together a lineup of fresh musical talents, but the venue itself has been giving emerging architects an opportunity to reinvent an outdoor recreational space.
Providing the setting for Warm Up this year is “Holding Pattern,” an installation by Brooklyn-based architecture firm Interboro Partners.
In their winning submission, the architects focused on the theme of recycling, proposing a concert-friendly space filled with objects that will also benefit its Long Island City neighbors in the aftermath of the summer series.
The question posed by Interboro Partners to the neighborhood community was, “Is there something you need that we could design, use in the courtyard during the summer, and then donate when ‘Holding Pattern’ is deinstalled in the fall?”
Underneath the ropey canopy is a seemingly random selection of items. The eclectic collection, all of which will be donated after the exhibition, was chosen based on needs of neighboring community organizations and includes stools, benches, lounge chairs, picnic tables, sandboxes, oak and plum trees, ping-pong and chess tables, foosball, a misting stage, a bike rack, a lifeguard chair and even a rock-climbing wall.
The architects chose to gather items based on material properties to create unique rooms with distinct sensory properties. The outcome was a tree room, a mirror room and a “rec” room. To accommodate the multiple requests for trees, the courtyard’s side gallery houses 60 red oaks, donated by the New York Restoration Project which will plant the trees around the neighborhood after the deinstallation. The tree room features a maze of trees planted in mulch within a retaining wall of straw bales. When “Holding Pattern” is uninstalled, the Vernon Boulevard Dog Run will receive benches and mulch. The benches will provide seating for dog owners, and the mulch will provide a soft ground cover for the dogs.
The “rec” room — an open area comprising the main part of the courtyard — is a large, column-free space that provides shade and accommodates the large amount of visitors attending the Warm Up performances. The room holds the benches, picnic tables, a lifeguard chair, rock-climbing wall, ping-pong table, pools, foosball table and a sandbox.
Visitors are encouraged to interact with and move objects around. To track the interaction with each object the museum has installed a camera at the top of the building.
Among the 79 objects intended for redistribution is a set of mirrors. These will find their way to the Long Island City School of Ballet’s expansion project. The architects incorporated the mirrors into the design by creating a fun house-like atmosphere in the smallest room of the courtyard.
Other local places that will receive items in the fall include taxi management companies, libraries, high schools, senior and day-care centers, community gardens and a post office.
In conjunction with the Warm Up series and to build upon connections between the museum and the community, PS1 will be hosting a series of programs, including a senior summer mixer, a B-boy (break dancing) workshop, a ping-pong tournament, a traditional Irish music and dance workshop, and a family summer reading celebration.
Warm Up 2011 runs for 10 consecutive weeks each summer, through Sept. 3, from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.
MoMA PS1 is located across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan. It is easily accessible by bus and subway.
Admission is $15. Included in this price is access to all museum exhibitions and Warm Up. MoMA Members receive one ticket for themselves with a valid membership card. Long Island City residents receive one free entry for themselves upon showing proof of their residency.
