Optimistically Cautious: The Apartment Show

I read about "The Apartment Show" in ed Magazine last week, and thought it was a fascinating concept. Artists were invited to a dilapidated apartment complex to transform the soon-to-be-renovated rooms into installation art, harvesting the energy of the space and at times whatever materials were left behind as inspiration. As Blair Brennan, one of the artists who participated in the show, explains in the ed piece, "'I like the analogy of a crime scene when it comes to interpreting installation art. The evidence is laid there, but it's up to the viewer to interpret it, to create some kind of fictional narrative, a story that will make sense of what they see.'"

Mack and I headed over to the non-descript building on Sunday afternoon. I somehow didn't expect anyone else to be there, but was pleasantly surprised to find a small group of patrons wandering the floors when we got there. After depositing a donation to the iHuman Youth Society, we were invited to explore the parts of the building not occupied. We wandered from room to room, scanning over brief descriptions of each of the individual exhibits. From a very intense condom-decorated bathroom (no pictures, sorry), to a brightly-painted mock children's room with aptly placed societal influences of guns and Playboy magazines, the displays ran the gamut from arcane to somewhat intelligible for us.

My favorite had to be the "caretakers room," with a plethora of hand-written notes plastered from floor to ceiling on the walls - from phone messages to directions to incomprehensible shorthand lists - it was overwhelming to be confronted with so many "moments" that had meaning for somebody, somewhere, at some time.

As with the Free for All exhibit, we probably didn't spend as much time as we could have, but I appreciated the opportunity to be exposed to alternative perspectives.