to Zoe Hosmer-Dillard, 09.16.09

Dear Zoe,

I would like to tell you about this one thing:

I rode the M train up from my loft to Long Island City, where the contemporary art museum, P.S.1 is located. Every saturday of the summer, this museum would hold a great bash, to which hordes of strangers would come & dance around a tree. I did bring my dancin' shoes, however, the courtyard was so filled to the brim with strangers that there was no room left for me. Instead, I walked the halls of the museum as a constant pulse of breakbeat music vibrated through its heavy walls. I imagine this is what it might feel like to be a a baby in the womb, though I don't remember well enough to say for sure.

The museum is named P.S.1 because it used to be a public school for elementary-aged children. I tried to keep this in mind as I wantered the many floors, & soon enough, faint ghosts of backpacks & jubilant calls began whizzing up & down the hallways.

Most of the art I observed as I drifted from room to room acted as an homage to the strange world of ironic &/or disturbing pop culture that we're already a part of. Screens displaying old horror films to the accompaniment of a sporadically programmed player piano, & beds with the names of Stat Wars droids (C-3P0 & R2-D2, to be exact) printed across the pillowcases made for most of the content. I began to wonder if the artists' role had somehow shifted from one who perpetuates culture to one who merely reflects upon it. & if that's true, how will we know what to look forward to in the future? I suppose the alternative to this though is the idea that what happens next is what's already happened; that we've become caught in a kind of feedback loop, & when we exit out of one end we simply emerge back at the beginning, like the hundreds of cruise ships and fishing boats who drift across the Bermuda Triangle searching for a way out.

However, there is one room that's different.

In P.S. 1 there is a room that's only open for two hours each day: from sunset to sundown. It has a door, beside which a medium-length line of curious & patient museum patrons extends. There is a security officer who ushers in tiny parties, few and far between, like the outside of a posh night club. I should also mention that this room is located on the top floor of the museum.

I eagerly awaited my turn to enter the room, composed, though occasionally I would find myself tapping my heel impatiently against the wall. After fifteen minutes, maybe more, I was finally led inside the room.

The first thing I noticed was that almost the whole of the room's open floor was occupied by people of every sort, laid out in rigid lines to optimize all the available space. Without even thinking about it, I contributed my body to this strange row, wondering what kind of display would be worth all this wait (& all this bending). Looking up, I discovered that there was nothing on the ceiling to look at; there wasn't even a ceiling. The walls of the room rose up & curved into a frame to display the real & open sky. Billowing clusters of drifting, pinkened clouds: this kind of art transcends culture, time, & every type of ironic climb that we thing gets so high up, the way we think Manhattan's pointed cityscape is really reaching something, until we find ourselves in a room, alone together, on a very romantic date with pure sky.

Like an armada of ships exploring out of love instead of conquest, these vast cumulonimbus clouds never find themselves emerging out of an old exit because they know nothing of beginnings or endings.

!

Otis Pig