The OHWOW gallery space was quite large, perhaps the length of a basketball court, although maybe a little smaller. The walls and floors were white. I arrived at the very beginning of Dean Blunt’s first American gallery performance, “White Flight,” not long after Blunt (Hype Williams) had finished setting up the space. At least, I believe he set up the space; there is photographic evidence on Twitter suggesting as much. Anyway, why I note that is because, when I arrived, the table, which was immediately to the right upon entering, was piled with alcohol (Cîroc) and fruit juice and those red and white plastic cups. (There were also two potted, fake plants at the foot of the table). At the center of the gallery space was a table, piled on and surrounded by In-N-Out burgers and fries. There must have been a couple hundred dollars worth of fast food on/around the table. No one really touched it until the hour-and-a-half mark, but some people sporadically took fries off the table throughout the night. Unsurprisingly, the alcohol was gone within the first 20 minutes.
Scattered all around the floor were dark red balloons (#99luftballons). Throughout the night, balloons were popped and kicked and thrown around without any apparent reason, but balloon interaction was, overall, pretty infrequent.
Furthermore, three shirtless black men who weren’t allowed to speak spent the night flexing, posing, and photobombing — I kid you not — almost every attempted photo I witnessed.
There was also loud, commercial rap music playing throughout the entire event. Occasionally people danced, but mostly they didn’t.
There was a rather large, semi-thuggish white guy walking around. He was there alone (I talked with him after the show, and he said, “Yeah, I was supposed to come with a friend, but he had to babysit…,” and then evaded every subsequent question that I asked). Throughout the night, he walked around yelling “psyche!” at the black men, throwing money on the ground, and then intimidating the guy who picked up (stole?) the money. (After the show, in a moment of dubious clarity, he asked me if I had seen who “did it.” I had. I had seen everything that happened that night.)
I’m genuinely uncertain as to whether or not this guy was a part of the show. I saw the black men getting paid at the end of the event, but this guy was never paid. I find it curious that the most intimidating person, the one who tried to establish any control over the seemingly aimless happening, was a large and semi-thuggish white guy.
I guess in a performance like this you can’t control everything that happens. For the most part, people came in, drank, looked at the food, stood around, talked with their friends, and then left. I stood against the wall, watching, the entire time. One person asked me what was going on, while another even asked me if I was Dean Blunt. I didn’t drink or eat, and I spent most of the time watching the schmoozing that happens at these kind of things, judging peoples’ fashion sensibilities (sorry), smiling at people who looked at/photographed me, and texting my girlfriend, in real time, everything I was seeing. But, eventually, something always happens. Toward the end of the night, the thuggish white guy came up and asked me if I wanted to use the balloons as a bed. My girlfriend had just told me to do something weird, so I said, reluctantly, “sure?” I walked over to the corner where he had gathered all the remaining balloons. A couple guys followed us. He told me to lie down, so I lied down in the pool of dark red balloons. Someone took pictures of me lying there, and when I stood up, I instinctively bowed. At that point, the event was basically over.
I wonder: did I enjoy “White Flight?” Was that even the point? The truth is that I stuck around for all of it, so in some respect, yes, I did. It was clear early on that Dean Blunt would not be playing music, and that what I saw was what I was going to get. It was also clear that it was, in some respect, a social experiment, and the conclusions were pretty predictable. I got some self-satisfaction as I was able to determine what would happen, and when. I enjoyed the questions that I asked myself while I was there, alone in the gallery, watching. But something hit me as I was standing outside, after the event had finished and as I was driving home. A few blocks away, and an hour later, James Ferraro and Dean Blunt would be playing actual music together at the Soho House in West Hollywood (which is, for all intents and purposes, a country club for monied, “creative” elites). The title of their Soho piece was “Watch the Throne,” while the title of the OHWOW Gallery performance was “White Flight.” On the one hand, a thousand-dollar show in luxury, and on the other, a free gallery show with shitty hip-hop, fast food, and relatively cheap alcohol. The distinction seemed too obvious. And what had initially felt like a potentially interesting, if somewhat obvious, social experiment/performance piece became a reminder that most of us didn’t have access to the real show, and that we likely never would.
[Photo: Barron Machat]