Warm Up, MoMA PS1, July 21, 2012. Photo: Loren Wohl
We had an amazing day on Saturday. Those looking for a diverse and danceable selection of current New York sounds were well satisfied by the third Warm Up of the year. The beautiful weather and NY-centric lineup combined for an incredibly enthusiastic, record-breaking crowd day.
Warm Up, July 14, 2012. Photo: Loren Wohl
Terrance Parker at Warm Up, July 14, 2012. Photo: Imogene Strauss
Warm Up 2012 at MoMA PS1, July 7, 2012. Photo: Loren Wohl
HWKN’s Wendy, winning design of Young Architects Program 2012. Image courtesy of HWKN. © Iwan Baan
The crowd at Warm Up 2011
When we started as music curators here three years ago, we were part of a new committee that had been assembled by Eliza Ryan to help refocus MoMA PS1’s weekly summer events into something that more closely reflected the changing tastes and demographics of both the museum and New York City/Brooklyn.
Our team strove to uphold the tradition of dance music that was already a major part of these legendary six-hour Saturdays celebrations. But dance music has morphed into something new and different; the technology is different, the influences are different, and the kids are different. There can be room for hip-hop, UK garage, New Orleans bounce, techno, disco, and an increasing number of live acts that embrace both DJ culture and a DIY spirit.
The group did not initially debate about changing the venue or overhauling the structure of the day. That would remain the same as it ever was. (We did upgrade the sound dramatically; shout out to Jim Toth.)
The focus is far more about assembling lineups with musicians, DJs, and live bands who might never typically share a bill. It is about bringing artists in from beyond the five boroughs and reaching around the globe. The first season in 2010 saw us booking flights from Spain, the Netherlands, and Africa. This was exciting—we were definitely onto something unique, and watching the ecstatic crowds embrace the transitions and transformations of the day was incredible.
What started as six semi-familiar peers in a museum conference room, scrambling for a cohesive lineup at the very last minute, has by now turned into a close-knit group of friends. (Another shout out to newest member, MoMA PS1’s Imogene Strauss.) Given time, we seem to have developed a uniquely successful way to combine and complement diverse tastes into what looks to be the most exciting summer season yet.
This diversity is no better demonstrated than by the inaugural Warm Up 2012 event, this Saturday, July 7. The lineup runs a generational gamut, starting with a DJ set by Arca, the young Venezuelan producer responsible for contributing an epic four track EP of abstract dance production to the UNO label’s free digital-release series. Toronto’s TRST, a young duo riding a new dark wave of electronic music, mark the first live performance of the season and provide a compelling reason to arrive in head-to-toe black summer regalia.
Scheduled to perform at last year’s Warm Up but canceled due to the Hurricane Irene pandemonium, Nguzunguzu will make midday bounce with their brand of sun-baked Los Angeles bass music. Light Asylum, the NYC-based duo of Shannon Funchess and Bruno Coviello, have been on the road for the better part of the year supporting their self-titled debut album. The frenetic energy of Funchess in a live setting never fails to set the audience in motion; we’re stoked to have them back home, if even for a fleeting moment before they continue their electro-fied conquest around the world.
Legendary house DJ and producer Todd Terry is a true NYC institution. Terry’s magical production touch launched an endless stream of international dance-floor hits and remixes throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Nothing feels like a more natural fit on the first day of Warm Up than a two-hour set of classic house music from Todd Terry.
It was as if I had walked into the middle of a professional cliché: crouched in the musty attic of MoMA PS1, I sifted through beaten-up boxes of institutional flotsam. I was attempting to survey the remaining materials to be included in The Records of MoMA PS1, which will open to the public at the end of 2012.
80th Precinct Building. Exhibition and studio space on top two floors operated by Institute for Art and Urban Resources (I.A.U.R.), later known as P.S.1. Photograph by Nancy Moran. 653 Grand Avenue, Brooklyn, New York (December 1972). Resin-coated print. MoMA PS1, 2299. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York
Installation view of Holding Pattern by interboro Partners, winner of the 2011 Young Architects Program, 2011. Digital rendering courtesy of Interboro Partners
Each year, MoMA renews its commitment to experimental architecture and architectural display with a full-scale installation of a project chosen from a competition among virtually untried architects. In the galleries of the Museum, architecture collection masterworks and temporary exhibitions of computer- and hand-drawn architectural renderings, models, photographs, and films are regularly shown. But each year the outdoor spaces of MoMA PS1 provide a unique temporary outdoor gallery where emerging talents can turn projects and drawings into spaces and palpable experiences.
The five teams have been working over the past week to incorporate feedback from their public Open Studios presentations at MoMA PS1 on June 18. Starting this week, you will be hearing from each of the teams every week until the next Open Studios on September 17, 2011, at MoMA PS1.
What do you get when you put a group of artists together on a condemned pier beneath the Brooklyn Bridge? No, this isn’t a joke, but the colorfully bizarre origin story of that renowned laboratory of contemporary art, MoMA PS1.
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