Bob: Sometimes I think that what we do is very primitive.
I have a stick with hair on the end of it.
The same way it was, you know, 50,000 years ago.
It hasn't changed very much.
Alanna: I think we've got to do that.
I think it's gonna be beautiful there.
Man: It's gonna go essentially to the ceiling.
Woman: Okay.
Is that what it's supposed to do?
Man: Yeah, I mean, it's...
Alanna: Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do.
I'm just having my back thoughts about remembering 40 years ago.
So it took up more of the wall 40 years ago.
I think a lot of the energy that comes out of New York art has to do with the artist
confronting that aspect of abandonment.
They take that energy right from the street, or right from the building.
Richard: It was a space that was almost an outdoor space at that point.
The windows were broken.
It was full of water.
It was very hard to think of as a building.
The best show to have been working on in the last few years was the "Rooms Show," the first PS1 show.
Alanna: We can't move it any farther to the right.
The only thing...
Man: At the very least, you can move it to here.
Alanna: Right, at the very least.
Man: But then...
Alanna: And then I'm just thinking about that.
Richard : In 1976, what Alanna decided to do was to invite a bunch of artists, close
to a 100, a lot of artists.
The idea was a very interesting one, a very simple one, choose your space, walk through
this wreck of a building, and tell me where you wanna work?
This just big place where we could make art.
Judith: You know, there was no social media and no word of mouth, the following, I mean,
what it became, the world-famous curators, who knew her, and knew to be here
for certain things because they just knew how exciting her vision was.
Alanna: It looks good.
Bob: To have an opportunity to literally be given carte blanche to make a piece.
Actually, I went through a lot, I just said, "You know, I don't want just one room, I want
two rooms, and I'm going to put a corridor in the wall between the rooms," and she said,
"Fine."
Alanna: How close are you staying to the original painting you did in the '76 show?
Bob: Oh, it's the lean and...
Alanna: The lean is the same.
Bob: ...and the backlit part.
All of that's the same..
Alanna: Alright.
Bob: The color and the paint are different.
Alanna: Okay, so that...the color and the paint are what you're giving yourselves 40
years of extra knowledge.
Bob: Yeah, I mean, this thing didn't even exist then.
Richard: In the first PS1 show, she took a classroom, and on that blackboard the text
was very sexual.
Now, Marcia is 80 years old, and so she's writing about her feelings about
those things now, as opposed to then.
Richard: One of the interesting things about the original show, most of us were close friends,
and most of us helped each other with our work because nobody could afford to hire assistants.
When we brought the steel from my piece into PS1 originally, Bob was one of the guys who
helped me and, you know, I probably helped him build the wall here.
Judith: I was one of the youngsters.
They were all 10 years older than me.
Really, in my association with the artists that were in "Rooms," I began to understand
that how you think about things is part of what you're doing.
That's what I think the sculptors made me understand.
Richard: In a certain sense, every piece in that show was an installation.
Now everything gets painted white, the floor is clean, so your eye moves.
But in the original show, your eye moved more slowly because there was water, and there
were reflections, and the walls were broken.
It was about the spaces, about the ruins, because there was no avoiding it.
And you walked from one person's wreck into another person's wreck into another person's wreck.
Bob: There's this, sort of, brewing intensity here.
You know, you've got, well, I don't know, 70 or 80 artists here, and everybody's trying
to come in to do something new.
Klaus: Alanna, a big toast.
We're here because 40 years ago, you started this.
To Alanna.
[Applause]
Alanna: You dream what kind of situations
you can provide that are exciting to everyone, exciting to an audience, exciting to people
who make art, exciting to people who look at art.
I can't really think of anything I'd rather do than what I do.
Richard: It was an important moment of change in the way that we all were able
to think about art.