When Professor Drabik assigned this project for us to do, I expected that the project is going to be tough. I didn’t know anything about art, so I didn’t know how exactly I would be choosing what to see. It turns out that having no foundation might be actually an advantage. You can literally decide to go see anything, and it will all be a new experiences. Our group ended up going to three completely different art pieces: Becoming Robot at The Asia Society, “Straight White Men” at The Public Theatre, and Zero Tolerance at MoMA PS1.
The first place we went was Becoming Robot. Lucius actually recognized the name of the artist, Nam June Paik (1932-2006). I was expecting that the exhibit was going to be about robots, like the ones one would see on Star Wars or some sort of sci-fi movie. The first thing we saw was a robot that looked quite dilapidated. This robot, named K-456, was perhaps the only “real” robot that we saw there. Nam June Paik was a visionary, one who was greatly ahead of his time. His robot ideas combined to lead the path to modern-day video technology, which was what his exhibit was mostly dedicated to. In another part of the exhibit, there were a family of robots created by TVs, a father, a mother, and a baby. The different sized of the TVs clearly exemplified the growth in television history. There was also a part in the exhibit where there was a video camera that broke all the light coming in and made everything you see into blue, red, and green. We stood in front of it to see how we would be portrayed in those colors. One thing that was very surprising at the exhibition was how each part of the exhibit seemed very unrelated to another. For example, the first robot K-456 was completely different from the family of robots and the video camera. Nam June Paik’s art explored the different parts of video technology as well as the robotic sense of it, combining it into this Becoming Robot exhibition. It is actually quite cool to see Nam June Paik so advance of his time.
Taking a radical step in a different direction, the next thing we saw was the performance of “Straight White Men”. We chose this performance primarily because of the title, “Straight White Men”. Entering the theatre, the music was the first thing anyone would notice. The music was very vulgar, and with an audience that was primarily old and Caucasian, it didn’t seem to fit. Nevertheless, many people were quite into the music, and I thought that was actually pretty funny. The show begins with a very humorous and comical introduction, and it was quite enjoyable. However, the second half of the performance started to become serious and quite tensed. The play ended with a very abrupt ending, and I personally wasn’t a big fan of it. One thing that this play did portray very well was the idea of privilege. The father and the three sons gather to reconcile for Christmas and in the end got all tensed because of their perception of privilege, with the oldest son not accepting it and trying to disregard that fact. The two younger sons are indifferent and does nothing about it, just like the father. The concept of privilege was explained in terms of a modified version of Monopoly, which I thought was very cool. If I were to change the performance, I would’ve end the show in a more “happy ending”.
Zero Tolerance was my personal favorite. My friend from MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) recommended me to go to MoMA PS1, and our group didn’t decide what to see until we were there. We saw a total of three exhibits there, but Zero Tolerance was definitely the best. Zero Tolerance depicts the political turmoil and demonstrations for rights by citizens of different countries from the 1960s all the way to present time. The exhibit included posters by John Lennon and Yoko Ono against the Vietnam War, demonstration at a church in Moscow by Pussy Riot against Vladimir Putin, attempting to breathe air into Tiananmen Square to revive the dead, crashing a car into a tree in St. Petersburg, rap video by a group of Turks, etc. All these strive to show the ill in our society, and the “zero tolerance” citizens have for the world. Even at present many other political tensions in the world could be incorporated. Look at the Umbrella Revolution/Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, “Black Lives Matter” demonstration etc. Maybe some of the world’s leaders should take a journey to MoMA PS1 and reflect on themselves.
~Christopher Chong
