Out Late: Inside the reinvention of MOMA PS1’s Warm Up
“Out Late” is Time Out’s nightlife and party column by DJ, Whorechata founder, and Staff Writer Ian Kumamoto, which will publish every other Tuesday. The previous edition was about how to have a Brat summer in NYC, in honor of Charli XCX’s groundbreaking album.
As much as I hate to admit this as a self-proclaimed Brat, I get tired of partying, too. The strobe lights, the poorly ventilated clubs, and the late night hours that turn into a shameful Uber ride past morning joggers have a poignant way of reminding me of my most degenerate tendencies. But what if we imagined a decadent club space that operated during the daytime and, not only that, but also took place in a former public school-turned-world-class-museum? This might sound like the type of dream party space you might only find in a place like Berlin, but actually, it’s in Long Island City, Queens.
MoMA PS1’s Warm Up series has become beloved by both the nightlife and art worlds for bridging the gap between two creative universes that rarely converge. It’s where you’ll find underground DJs spinning on a stage decorated by globally renowned modern artists and club kids dancing alongside museum curators.
MoMA PS1’s Warm Up series isn’t new, of course: The legendary party began in 1997 and has hosted DJs and performers that went on to do big things, including Honey Dijon, Cardi B, Solange, and many others. The COVID-10 pandemic brought a change in directors and big personnel shifts that significantly altered its direction. Now, in its second year operating post-pandemic, Warm Up is keen on reinventing itself.
I spoke with Warm Up curators Kari Rittenbach and Nick Scavo about how they’re re-imagining the series and what longtime Warm Up fans can expect moving forward. To understand how the event series will be different this year, it’s worth understanding its curators’ backgrounds: Rittenbach is an art curator at MoMA PS1 and Scavo is an experimental artist and musician. Both have been longtime attendees of the party series but recently joined the curatorial team.
One of the biggest shifts from pre-pandemic Warm Up parties is that the museum actually stays open during the DJ sets, which means that the art inside is something that Rittenbach and Scavo now have to think about when building the lineup. Because of this, the curation is all about contrasts and synergy: How do the set design, museum art, and DJ sets all speak to one another? At the core of this new era is a desire to push New Yorkers to think about how sound, visual art and entertainment converge—each medium ultimately aspiring to awaken something within us and encourage us to approach the idea of a social space from a new perspective.
That nightlife community also deserves a space in the museum.
“I think it’s interesting to think about how that nightlife community also deserves a space in the museum,” Rittenbach tells me. “We want to expand the mind of our audience, so someone who might be coming into MoMA PS1 to see an exhibition suddenly hears something on stage that they’re not accustomed to. We’re really thinking about those juxtapositions.”
An example of that clash in genres and concepts can be seen in their party coming up on July 26. For that party, you can expect an experimental artist, African American Sound Recordings, who plays music with live saxophones and works through archives of sound while playing live music over them. That performance will be followed by a set by Easyfun, a British producer who helped co-produce Charli XCX’s Brat. That’s then going to transition into the headliner, UNIIQU3, who is a pioneer of Jersey Club music.
In their process of curating this year’s lineup, Rittenbach and Scavo also thought about how they could help elevate underground DJs and artists who don’t often get their flowers, or for artists who are already well known, how they can present them in a way that no one has ever seen them before. They’re going back to the series’ roots, which started out as a space that was more experimental and not afraid of challenging its audience’s expectations. “Musicians often don’t have that kind of opportunity for institutional validation and being able to show work at an institution like MoMA PS1 really does give that kind of validation that’s very rare in experimental music and club music,” Scavo tells me. “I performed at the dome in PS1 in 2017 and being able to say that was massively consciousness changing for me at that time.”
It’s a third space where the daytime and nighttime creatives converge.
What hasn’t changed about Warm Up, though, is what’s always made it work: It’s a third space where the daytime and nighttime creatives converge. The name of the event itself is an allusion to its liminality—A place where some begin their night, and others end it. It’s the reason that Scavo suggests arriving to the event as soon as doors open and staying till the very end—there’s a sort of narrative arc to the entire experience. “There’s a momentum where there’s a live set at 6pm and a transition into more dance-forward sets for the evening,” Scavo tells me. “There’s this group catharsis that happens.” To feel the catharsis, you have to be there for the buildup.
It’s a space to party, but it’s also a space to learn, socialize and get off your damn phone.
Given that Warm Up is one of the longest-surviving parties in the city, Scavo sees it as a sort of oral history. They’re continuing a legacy that is about much more than just music: It’s about creating new memories that are loosely linked to a New York of the 90s, when the party started. At its core, Warm Up is about maintaining some essence of New York culture that some might claim has been lost forever. It’s a space to party, but it’s also a space to learn, socialize and get off your damn phone.
“Warm Up is about having a wholesome day rave and create an experience for you to remember,” Rittenbach tells me. “To me, it’s what New York summer is all about.”
I went to Warm Up this past Friday when the lineup included Nick León b2b DJ Python, Safety Trance, Lolina and FITNESS.
An hour-by-hour account of an evening at MoMA PS1 Warm Up
5:45pm
I arrive with my friend Jezz, and the vibe is chill. There aren’t a lot of people yet, and for the most part, folks are sitting on picnic tables or waiting to get a drink at the bar. The bar menu includes cocktails like a frozen passion fruit lemonade, frozen margarita, and Aperol Spritz as well as a decent selection of beers, seltzers and wine.
5:51pm
We stumble upon an experimental performance of someone crawling on the gravel shirtless and hugging people. I’m into it, I think.
5:57pm
We admire the giant interactive sculptures by Yto Barrada, the Moroccan artist whose installation dominates the courtyard. The structures she built have a colorful and playful look to them, but they’re actually inspired by Moroccan pyramids. I didn’t know Morocco had pyramids but it turns out they do, and they look like stairways to heaven. People are climbing over the sculptures, drinking frozen drinks on them, and there’s an easy energy that makes everyone feel less intimidating. We make two friends who are artists and play in a band together. One of them lives upstate and came here for Warm Up.
6:30pm
We dance for a bit. The people here are cool, all beautiful in a non-conventional but still captivating way. There are lots and lots of tattoos, many of them with nature scenes, some of them alluding to Satan. I go inside to use the bathroom.
7:29pm
Jezz and I end up in an exhibition upstairs, and there’s an open square on the ceiling where you can see the clouds. They’re beautiful today and remind me of the clouds in the Toy Story movies, very white and self contained against a cobalt sky. There’s a couple dozen other people here taking a breather from dancing, and I can tell some of them are definitely high.
Jezz and I speculate if the hole is completely open or if there’s glass over it, because I swear I can feel the breeze. We ponder this for a while and when we leave, we read the artist statement outside. It turns out the installation is by an artist called James Turrell and the open hole is, indeed, completely open. The artist created by shattering the cement roof with a jackhammer in 1979, a violent process for an otherwise peaceful outcome.
7:50pm
We exit the museum building and walk to a separate section in the courtyard, where a couple of street vendors from the Street Vendors Project are set up. We’re not hungry, but the food looks good.
8:30pm
We dance and dance and dance. The sun begins to set and the skyscrapers all around us are reflecting light. People look at us from their apartment buildings that tower over the museum, and I wave to them. They don’t see because there are hundreds of other people dancing. Three people bring out huge bubble guns and we try to pop them. There is, actually, a feeling of catharsis.
8:56pm
The night reaches a peak. It’s crowded now, and I don’t know who I’m dancing next to. We make a couple of new friends and run into a couple of old acquaintances.
10pm
The night is over and everyone is asked to leave. Me and Jezz want to keep moving our bodies, at least a little bit, so we get Korean food and record a TikTok dance.
How to catch the next MoMA PS1 Warm Up
Where: MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Ave, Queens, NY 11101)
When: Every Friday from now until August 16 from 4pm-10pm.
Cost: $20-$25
How to get in: Get advance tickets on their website.
The vibe: Ravey and experimental.
What to wear: Dress for the heat, dress to impress and most importantly, wear comfortable shoes for the gravel courtyard.