Joshua, Kevin, and I went to MoMA PS1 in Queens to see the exhibit Zero Tolerance. An interesting site that welcomed us to the museum is 4 dumpsters with one of the words “Throw Your Art Away.”
The Exhibit inside the building was a massive collection of work from various artists. It featured multiple mediums of art such as photography, painting and documentaries. Most of the work is from the latter half of the 20th century all the way up to today. They are connected, however, through their conveyance of the tensions of freedom and control around the world. The exhibit is called “Zero Tolerance” to describe the way people feel they are not tolerated by the government and so the lack freedom. “Zero Tolerance” is also the name of the policy in New York City in the 1990s when police took a tough stance against crime and immoral behavior.
One room had TVs on all the walls and it sounded like chaos when you tried to listen to all of it at once. Nevertheless, by paying attention to one of the TVs, we could understand what was going on and it was most likely an important event that we did not know about before, so we can learn a lot from being in that room. All of the events were outside of the United States and in foreign languages, but there were subtitles if to understand what people were saying.
Other events captured on video were taking place in Russia where homosexual practices are banned. Female rebels were spontaneously kissing Russian police women to demonstrate their protest against the anti-gay laws.
There was a music video, called Wonderland, made to show the terrible conditions in which some people live in. The title is misleading by making it see like if it will be about a place full of admiration, when the place lacks admiration. The title is trying to let the audience know that the people feel that they can make their neighborhood a wonderland if the government stops interfering and threatening to demolish the place. The video explains that the government is trying to tear down the neighborhood in Istanbul and how the inhabitants will not let them do that. It showed a group of men in a poor neighborhood demonstrating their disagreement of government corruption while fighting the police. For those interested in watching the video, the URL is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUzK6c0TVV4
Although this does not directly show any correlation with the lack of freedom due to government control, this part of the exhibit is interesting because it shows how one person can make a change no matter how small. There were photos of a person trying to make changes to the featureless Tiananmen square in northeastern China. He glued a rock to the surface of the square and showed how one person can make a small change even on a large featureless area. This encourages people to do something to improve the quality of life in the world because anyone can make a change.
Adrian, Joshua, and Kevin
