MoMA PS1: Zero Tolerance

i only have one image from the Zero Tolerance show at MoMA PS1. i thought i'd have more, but nothing resonated with me quite as much as this image did.

Silence = Death, ACT UP, 1987

as you may or may not know, i am a product of the eighties. born in 1982, i witnessed the AIDS crisis as a young child. i know the Silence = Death campaign started in 1987, so i couldn't possibly remember it's first iterations, so i'm not sure quite when i became aware of this scary epidemic that was killing so many people. maybe it was the AIDS quilt, which was also first displayed in 1987... but more likely i remember it from 1990 or '92 when i was 8 or 10. to this day, i remember being incredibly moved, and incredibly scared. and the Silence = Death poster was the most beautiful and haunting piece of activist art i had ever seen, and i had to witness it on the news, from the comfort and safety of my small midwestern town. where i barely knew any gay people, let alone ones who had contracted the disease. i knew rumors. they ran rampant throughout school. you might get AIDS from a fellow classmate whom you helped whilst they were bleeding. you might get it from spit, or blood, or snot, or whatever. you might get AIDS from hugging someone, or from a toilet seat. it was a scary and confusing time. and Silence = Death was a touchstone so powerful that years later, when i watched the recent(ish) documentary How to Survive a Plague, i felt gut-punched when i saw it. i hadn't even remembered how powerful it felt as a kid, until i saw it again.

as humans we are given the blessing / curse of forgetting. but every once in awhile we're offered the mirror of remembering. remembering our fear, our loneliness, our wide-eyes staring at far away places where inconceivable things are happening to people we don't know. i felt something like this again when i walked into a near-empty room at PS1 and witnessed the poster, in "real life", lit beautifully with a stark spotlight. it affected me similar to the first time i saw it. i must've stood in front of it, staring, for five minutes. i felt the urge to take it, to steal some of that feeling when a piece is so pure, so concise, that you're jealous you didn't come up with it yourself. that you fool yourself into believing you might have one ounce of that power - to affect change, to incite a riot... but you have nothing to riot against.

image shot with iPhone 5, edited with VSCO app.

MoMA PS1: Art Amnesty, Bob and Roberta Smith

so, i just spent the past few weeks in NYC - the longest i've ever spent there. this is the first in a series of posts where i try to distill what it was actually like for me to be there, because i'm having a hard time comprehending the deep and undying love i feel for the city.

one of my first stops was MoMA PS1 in Queens. if you live in NYC and haven't been there yet, go. right now there are two exhibitions on that are compelling, engaging, and thought-provoking. here is my experience of one of them, Bob and Roberta Smith's Art Amnesty. tomorrow you'll read about the second exhibition, also from MoMA PS1, Zero Tolerance.

Bob and Roberta Smith set out the trash bins in front of the museum for people to literally throw their art away. the museum staff then empties the bins, and puts the art in the gallery. all of the art. interspersed throughout the gallery were the "artists" actual works, most of which i've decided to include here. it was at once an indictment of the gallery/museum/white box, and a celebration of the democracy of art. juxtaposed with the "pieces" were hand-signed notes with messages like "I PROMISE TO NEVER MAKE ART AGAIN" and "I AM NO LONGER AN ARTIST."

from the artist: “Many successful artists have recently voiced embarrassment that their work commands high prices. Artists may also use the opportunity of the Art Amnesty to expel certain works of art from the art market and demote them to objects unburdened by grand expectations and dashed dreams.” all of the work that the Smith's contributed to the art amnesty (a lot of which had been displayed in New York before) will be unceremoniously discarded with the rest of the artwork at the close of the show.

from the MoMA PS1 website / artist statement:

Why are some people artists while others are not? Was Joseph Beuys an idiot when he said everyone is an artist? Do artists think they are a cut above the rest of us? Are the arts a good in themselves, or is it much, much, more complicated than that?

Many artists delude themselves into believing that they are promising, productive artists when they would live much more fulfilled and useful lives engaged in proper employment. I PROMISE NEVER TO MAKE ART AGAIN provides a baptism of necessary real life and allows artists to "Get Real." Ditch a life of poverty and precarious self-employment! Don't miss a life-changing opportunity.

all photos taken by me, iPhone 5, edited in VSCO app.