VIDEO Footage & Critical Reaction to Animal Collective’s Guggenheim Art Show

by Hipster Run Off on Mon, 2010/03/08 - 2:06pm Post to Twitter

After Animal Collective’s art show at the Guggenheim, the Alt Report tracked ‘how it was covered’ by internet outlets. While most internet outlets have mastered how they will cover Animal Collective’s musical output for the next 10-20 years, just wanted to monitor the relevant alt/mainstream internet 2 see if any 1 would ‘pan’ the show, since so many twitterers called it ‘a huge waste of time and money.’

Just want 2 know what it was like 2 be there bc not every1 can live in NYC.
Not every1 can buy scalped art show tickets.
Not every1 can be the AnCo fan that they want to be.

It seems like the common themes were

• face paint
• it was mediocre
• face paint
• Nothing really ever happened
• face paint
• so many ppl there to experience an AnCo concert and drink absinthe
• face paint
• was the ultimate art school party for NYC college students
• face paint

COVERAGE//////
///////// ANALYSIS
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Self Titled Mag provides the analysis that I feel most interested in:

One of the most striking things about last night’s “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” performance had nothing to do with Danny Perez’s depths-of-hell visuals or Animal Collective’s patient, plodding performance piece. It was the fact that tons of college kids showed up to a major art museum with streaks of paint across their face, as if it was time to play Cowboys and Indians or something.

and

Begin what, you ask? How about hooting and hollering like a flock of wide-eyed owls, and treating the main floor the way it was intended—as a playground for art-damaged misfits.

“I came here thinking it’d be like the [videos I saw] of them before,” said Samson, an Animal Collective fan who chose to see them for the first time…at an art exhibit. “So it kinda annoyed me at first, because I wanted to move—I wanted to dance around, you know? But now I’m a lot more into it, a lot more relaxed and going with the flow.”

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Vanity Fair ‘pans’ it, says they are good at branding, but it left u wanting ‘more’:

Conceptually, it was a good—some might say brand-savvy—idea. Animal Collective has a purchase on both art-school students and upwardly mobile, liberal thirty-somethings. Curating a show in the same spiraling, six-floor space Matthew Barney once inhabited was the next logical step in their career. Call me naïve, but I expected the sort of brain-melting bass and vertiginous calliopes that drew me to the band with their 2005 release, Feels. There were crunches, drips, drops, and bass that were on the verge of flowering into a full-on freakout, but they never quite got there. The projections and syncopated lights weren’t as visceral as they could have been. The Guggenheim’s rotunda is one of the best rooms in New York, and I know I wasn’t the only one clamoring for Animal Collective to come out and tear the roof off the place with some savagely swooning harmonies and ear-splitting bass.

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Rolling Stone attempts to describe it like it degenerated into some ‘wild party’ and no1 cared about ‘art’:

But once the absorbed the piece’s ambient embrace and gloriously disorienting soundwork, the gallery quickly turned into a wild party. Two people snuck behind the couch-like mountain to cuddle, and soon, tons of spectators were climbing up it like a puffy jungle gym. Two guys in animal masks spazzed out wildly while other people just crashed on the floor; people joyously snarfed Pernod absinthe cocktails; one eager fan unsuccessfully tried to start “a Guggenheim wave” to corkscrew up the gallery; a thick puddle of barf was spotted in the unisex bathroom.

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NYMag called at an ‘excuse to socialize’:

Anything that involves taking over the Gugg and serving absinthe should be a good time, but we’re not sure we would’ve painted our faces (which some did) and paid 30 bucks (as most did) merely to bask in abstract projections and highly processed junglelike noises. Still, the photos — of which we have twelve — are something to see, and unlike most museum visits (or concerts, for that matter), this was a fine excuse to socialize.

*******

The Wall Street Journal basically said that nothing happened in a metaphorical way:

Midway through the performance, a translucent, jelly-bean shaped balloon fell from the top floor of the museum. Upon floating to the bottom, it was batted around for a while; closer examination revealed it to be an inflated condom. Maybe that was the most symbolic, or most absurd, comment of the night: an egg-shaped object falling through a womb, which turns out to be a prophylactic.

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The New York Times spent 5 paragraphs trying to describe what it sounded like:

The music was built from loops, many with old analog synthesizer sounds: deep throbs, bell-toned pings with their pitches bending, drones, chirps, static, and speedy burbles, all welling up and circling the space. There were also crashes, splashes, doomy altered voices, a quick Middle Eastern-tinged string-instrument phrase and bits of Gregorian chant.

The length of the repeated loops sometimes coalesced into something like a rhythm, but not one that lingered. At one point, about half an hour in, a nearly understandable voice sang something like a melody line a few times; it didn’t reappear.

But everything else did, again and again, in shifting permutations until the bits became familiar. For the first hour, there was material aplenty, pulsating and whizzing and twinkling, materializing and melting away, dense and changeable phantoms drifting through the white space. By the halfway point, however, it wore thin: Those pings again? That string line? The conversations grew louder. The video was also scanty and repetitive; weren’t there any vertiginous outtakes from “ODDSAC”?

But Animal Collective had saved a few things for the last hour: a richly consonant drone, different chanting, something distantly related to a twangy guitar and to a chord. The music drifted from spooky stimulation toward meditation and serenity, not as a narrative conclusion but as yet another way to experience the room. An encore of sorts was largely a reprise of each loop, like a credits sequence.

*****

Pitchfork said nothing critical/judgmental, just posted a photo gallery.

******

SPIN Magazine basically made fun of the people who went there with face paint looking for a ‘concert experience’:

The museum’s escorts were bombarded with questions. “I’ve been asked if anything’s going to happen about 200 times so far,” said one. “My answer: Nope. This is it. And I feel like this event advertised a little wrong. People are here for a concert and they’re certainly not getting one.

She’s right — the 19-year-olds with glow sticks and face paint were clearly looking for something a bit more…. festive.

******

Brooklyn Vegan called it ‘underwhelming’ but then said ‘Peggy Guggenheim would approve’:

The always challenging and ever-divisive band managed to confound plenty of their fans during the event, but to be fair, a large amount had probably never witnessed a sound installation before. And even as far as sound installations go, it was at times underwhelming. It was perhaps better served as less of a revelatory art piece and more of a completely unique and relaxing way to view and experience one of the most beautiful indoor spaces in all of New York City. Watching saturated colors shifting in tones illuminate the high glass ceiling of the Guggenheim was easily hypnotic.

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Do yall feel like u were there now?
Is the main point of going 2 ’shows’ 2 ‘people watch’?
Can n e 1 find a link to some sort of art world guru giving a legitimate critique of the performance instead of just ‘blog recaps’?
Do yall feel more alone & overwhelmed than ever when u end up in a room with a bunch of ppl with common interests?

Did AnCo ‘jump the shark’ and dilute their brand with this art show?
Do u wish u were there?
Have u ever worn face paint 2 an alt event?