This past Saturday marked the beginning of the highly anticipated MoMA PS1 Warm-Up Series. The summer’s Warm-Up Series is put together by Director Klaus Biesenbach, Assistant Curator Eliza Ryan and a committee full of music label gurus and recording companies. For the length of the summer, every Saturday, people will flock to Long Island City, Queens to enjoy music and entertainment in an exciting venue known for its unique and innovative art.
The MoMA PS1 Warm-Up Series continues attracting new talent and popular DJs, and is in its third year of being curated by a panel of music industry figureheads in conjunction with the museum. Saturday’s kick-off party’s amazing lineup included New York’s Arca and Light Asylum, Los Angeles’ Nguzunguzu and Toronto’s Trust. Arca has been featured on the first weekly Warm-Up Mix. These popular mixes contain approximately 40 minutes of music – the idea is to warm up your ears for what’s to come!
Aside from the great music lineup, party-goers can expect to find the new winning design from the Young Architects Program Competition housed in the PS1 Courtyard. Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner of HWKN designed this year’s winner, Wendy. Wendy is a very dynamic sculpture with multiple long blue arms jutting out into the courtyard. Her arms periodically shoot water to both cool, and inadvertently surprise, the Warm Up crowd. A cube of scaffolding around 56ft high, tall enough to be seen from surrounding subways, surrounds her. The dynamic nature of Wendy’s spiky arms is juxtaposed by the precise cubic scaffolding that surrounds her exhibiting a unique balance between order and disorder.
Along with the aesthetically pleasing and interesting nature of the work, Wendy is also environmentally conscious. Her arms are coated in a substance called Titanium Nanoparticles that function to clean the air around her. She will end up cleaning the air to an equivalent of taking 26 cars off the road.
MoMA PS1 also offers Summer School, an annual series of lectures, workshops and discussions. The idea is to bring students together for a focused conversation on contemporary practice. The education program turns MoMA PS1 into a seasonal campus in August! This year’s classes will be taught by such cultural figures as Marina Abramović, Steve Paxton and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. For more information, click here.
You don’t want to miss these exciting weekly events! We hope to see you there.