It also helps that the Church St building's landlord is apparently "sympathetic" to the installation. ![]() So how does a nonprofit, donation-based space stay afloat and pay rent in pricey TriBeCa? "Dream House" is run by La Monte Young's MELA Foundation and supported by Dia Art Foundation, among others (the visuals and music that make up Dream House were exhibited by Dia in a different space, in Chelsea, in 2015). She says that she volunteers because coming to the space after a long day in the city relieves her stress. "We get crowded on Friday nights," says Rebecca Lentjes, a music writer who has worked as a volunteer monitor at "Dream House" on and off for years. ![]() The street-level door to the space is almost unmarked, so you have to seek it out - which plenty of people do. You might miss it if you didn't know it was there. The scene recalls a line from TV's 30 Rock, when Jack Donaghy says, "Never follow a hippie to a second location." This feels like the second location. A decade ago, Artforum remarked of the place, "Outside it is 2006, inside it seems perpetually 1985." And it still does. In fact, that seems to be the whole point of "Dream House": an otherworldly, head-clearing experience with no chintzy museum gift shop or art-dealer sales pitch at the end.įounded in 1993 by visual artist Marian Zazeela and experimental music icon La Monte Young, "Dream House" has served as a continuously running light-and-sound installation for decades - part meditation room, part art installation. It's a throwback to the legendary, artist-friendly New York of yore, back when creatives of all kinds were free to pursue art for art's sake without all the dream-crushing real estate pressures that make it downright impossible today. It feels like a place far removed from 2016, a world away from this city of pricey restaurants and boutique gyms. It's an art installation that you could sit in for an hour without realizing you're even inside an art installation. ![]() For a small donation, visitors are invited to spend as long as they like in a series of purple-lit, incense-filled rooms, listening to spacey minimalist music and absorbing the effects of the space's immersive light installation. "Dream House," an unassuming third-floor apartment located off Church St in TriBeCa, is that rarest of all things: a place dedicated to relaxing in an area full of over-stimulated, overextended New Yorkers. Six or seven people are standing or sitting around the carpeted rooms in various meditative poses: gazing at video installations, lying back, sitting with crossed legs on meditation pillows. The apartment is smoky, which makes a neon sign on the ceiling that reads "The Dream House" (back-to-back in forwards and backwards script) appear fuzzy. The first thing I notice is the overwhelming smell of incense.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |