If you live in LA, you should go to the Modern Millennial exhibit. As soon as you possibly can, too, cuz it’s over in 6 days. I’ll explain where and how to find it in a minute, but first I want to tell you what it is.
Modern Millennial is an art installation / existential performance art piece / media experiment in the spirt of Exit Through The Gift Shop / I’m Still Here, except the theme is about being a person going through the modern experience.
Modern Millennial began with a Kickstarter.
Obviously.
The project was funded, and the exhibit installed, so now what’s happening is during the month of September a dude named Moses Storm is living inside an art exhibit in an industrial loft in #DTLA. The loft is filled throughout with installations that comprise the Modern Millennial exhibit, and Storm, the eponymous modern millennial, living life in said loft, is himself an interactive installation as well. It’s funny and weird and smart and awesome.
Modern Millennial seems, at first, like it will be a lampoon of millennial clichés — and it is definitely that — but it’s also something so much more interesting and introspective and sincere in the process.
“The Modern Millennial,” proclaims the Kickstarer, “Is a game-changing form of immersive performance art in which roaming audiences experience epic insights into a generation.”
But, of course, Millennials are already the most poked, prodded, packaged, positioned, market-tested, focus grouped, classified, and stereotyped generation in history. And of course, the buying and selling of ourselves to ourselves is already part of our Millennial experience, and each of us in the attendee target audience is a full-time object in our own, modern media experiment.
Of course, that’s part of the point. The art and the artist are both keenly aware they are the results of the same generational forces they are ridiculing.
Or maybe not ridiculing at all.
There are, in a sense, three phases to the Modern Millennial exhibit. First, there is the digital precursor that you encounter before the physical space of the show. Then there is the in-person experience of the exhibit itself. And finally there is the digital afterlife of the exhibit, living on through shared photo content and hashtag feeds. Each of these three aspects comes with its own distinct tone and role in the narrative arc of the Modern Millennial experience, and likewise, the modern millennial experience.
Phase 1.
Google “Modern Millennial” and the first thing you’ll find is the Kickstarter.
A typical cocktail of narcissism, hype, and jargon, it’s also unmistakably meta: taking its absurd premise seriously while also mocking itself, Millennials, (Kickstarer campaigns), everything:
Our goal with this piece is to show a different side of Millennials. And prove that not all of us are lazy narcissist who are just looking for a handout.
Some cool stuff happens if we hit our stretch goals.
If reached, we will tour with the exhibit. I am thinking Paris!
Phase 2.
But in the physical space of the exhibit, the the mood is notably different. It’s exposed, honest, intimate. The way things look online is not how they feel in person.
Obviously.
@nimblewill
The cynicism and detachment of digital distance break down into vulnerability and sincerity in physical space. So many of the pieces are an exploration of existential yearning for meaning and connection.
@babiejenks
@iamstevienelson
@actressamanda
@shelbyfero
@radojcich
The Wall of Activism, for example, is a usual suspects lineup of viral sincerity eruptions.
@snowcone88
It’s impossible not to view a LiveStrong Bracelet, a Stop Kony poster, a bucket full of ice water (among others), with a cynical side-eye. But when you see them displayed this way, all cataloged together, they are also inescapably earnest. These recurring, massive social hysterias of optimism and the dream of collective empowerment; this ceaseless desire to care.
The most popular piece in the show (based on frequency of Instagram appearances) is also the most inscrutable.
@skiparnold
Is it a comment about being unafraid to come out as an artist? To claim a sincere artist identity in the midst of a storm of irony?
@hoorayjen
Or is it a jab at the pretentiousness of the concept? An ironic joke about such an analog anachronism?
@kmahair
Does such a thing as a “serious artist” still even exist, or is the popularity of the piece akin to that of an endangered animal on display at the zoo?
@peterhinz
Is it for real, or is it a joke?
@taysprizzle
Does it matter?
@alimerlina
Phase 3.
For an exhibit titled, #ModernMillennial, the show itself is remarkably, unremarkably lo-fi. The Modern Millennial is less infatuated with technology than with humanity. And yet the experience is inherently hybridized with digital DNA.
Obviously.
In 2014, our digital technology is increasingly hurtling towards pervasive invisibility, insinuating itself into our every waking moment with the banal inevitability of electricity. And yet, it’s the human interactions with the art pieces, through the lens of digital media, that turn them on like a switch. Without Instagram, or at the very least the vernacular of Instagram, much of Modern Millennial wouldn’t really make any sense.
“Stand Here Do Nothing” is built to basically only really work once it’s in a photo you’ve posted up somewhere:
@lucifergoosifer
Likewise, “Like This So I know You Still Exist.”
@danielcarberry
Taking and posting these photos is at once a cliché and an act of participating in a piece of art about a cliché.
@emilyfaye2
But it’s ok. Don’t worry. You can’t help it. This stereotypical experience — it’s universal.
@cassydbadiiiiiiiie
Modern Millennial sincerely delivers on what its ironic (or not) Kickstarter promised: it captures the truths our contemporary condition. And it does so with humor and humanity. There’s certainly plenty to mock about the times we live in, but we’ve got to have compassion for our predicament, too.
Obviously.
@babiejenks
How to get to the Modern Millennial Exhibit.
In a time where basically everything is accessible online, the show is almost stringently unfindable. You stumble into it like a niche forum from the ’90s. We used to discover things online. Now the only way to access a real sense of discovery is through things hidden offline. So go:
