On Saturday, MoMA branch PS1 hosted their weekly (in the summer) party Warm Up, with their widest variety of acts yet. More photos from Nicola Turner and a review of the vibe from Alex Gortman are after the jump.
We could classify P.S.1's most recent Warm Up Saturday, which featured DJ sets by Animal Collective, CFCF and Babe Rainbow, as well as live jams from Blondes, Oneohtrix Point Never and Prince Rama, as a gallery party gone wild, but that would be basically wrong. Gallery parties, for instance, sometimes hire college students to tend the open wine bar. Warm Up Saturday employed the more down-to-earth method of dispensing drink tickets, sort of like an exclusive country fair. And, really, was there anything more in our thoughts that cool evening than bumrushing the ticket booth and whisking away with a roll of tickets under our arms? Not really. But there were other attractions—side attractions to accentuate our good vibes. Animal Collective's set, for one, seemed engineered for farmer's market-style strolling, a way slower method of strolling than you've ever seen in Manhattan, and one which does not yet have a corresponding word in that borough's vernacular. Every twenty minutes or so we'd experience a sudden wetting sensation and feel fear, only to realize we'd been walking under an enormous sprinkler which had been stationed near play pools of children making noise, listening to indie-electro, and fake drowning each other, and we relaxed again.
After stationing ourselves to the side of the museum cafe, behind a velvet rope and crammed with smokers and lingerers and, best of all, a young couple dancing to Animal Collective's set in a way that was truly painful to watch—if adorable—we looked back at what we'd come from. And the sight, from our level near the stage, was like what you hear Medieval festivals looked like: hoards of people walking around the back, lines and lines of beer-thirsty folk, swaying crowds near the front, hundreds of small groups converging into what really looked like, as one observer nearby noted, a very elaborate flash party where half the people came more for the entire event (and, it was a night of honesty, the booze) than the music alone.
Come Blondes, night had basically arrived and with it took the kids and other unhip people, one or the other of the duo getting manifestly more into it than his partner, who sort of bobbed psychotically, neither noticing that the very innovative and artsy golden decorations behind them had flipped over to the cardboard side. Whoops. So fine. Don't head out to Warm Up Saturday thinking you're getting the art and music equivalent of a Mexican cockfight. You won't get that. But what you will get, for one freaking minute, is the sort of community-oriented celebration that isn't often excecuted as enjoyably as this one, and maybe, also, for a minute, relief from the rat race.
