MAJICAL CLOUDZ

MoMA PS1 Warm-Up, July 27th

I had never been to PS1 gallery before, so after we soundchecked I walked around and looked at some of the exhibits. The best part of my (incomplete) exploration was the ice-cold room where pieces of glaciers were being exhibited. It gave me a lot of different feelings — in some ways it reminded me of what a 19th-century exhibition of the last living Dodo bird might feel like. Something very unfamiliar is sitting in the room in an alienated form, representing the scarcity and endangerment of its type. I wasn’t sure if the piece suggested any clear course of action or not.

We played third of five acts, all the rest of which were DJs that played varying versions of dance music. As our music is in some sense an antithesis to that, the beginning of our set was confusing for most of the people in the audience. It took us until at least halfway through the set to get most peoples’ attention, but by the end people were focused and for the most part seemed to be enjoying it. We were out of our element in a number of ways, so I felt strange about it after we finished playing.

There were a couple of instances of people talking, looking at me, pointing at me, then laughing to themselves while I looked at them. This is something I’m used to as it happens infrequently, but it was particularly evident here. In most cases, people are laughing because I’m standing in front of them with a microphone, looking at them seriously, singing very serious music, very naked. Sometimes that’s something to laugh about, because it’s uncomfortable. I’m sure there are other cases where someone is laughing simply because they think I’m a buffoon/loser, which is sort of a variation on the former (albeit more negative/critical): in both cases the person is reacting to the extreme nature of the presentation.

It was definitely an honor to play PS1. I love MoMA and being able to be involved in some way with such a venerable art institution was cool. That said, I think we do best when we are playing for audiences that are interested in introspection rather than dancing.

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