Distress Signals

"This sprawling installation (or in the New York gallery's parlance, "spatial collage") had transformed the Wooster Street space into a warren of rooms and hallways that resembled a series of stage or film sets, including a "clandestine drug lab," a Chinatown basement store, and a pirate radio station. I gingerly navigated through half-destroyed walls and over uneven floors strewn with detritus, escaping with vivid memories of one of the strangest contemporary art experiences to be had in those years."

"What struck me most about this and other seemingly anarchic installations of the aughts-including Dan Colen and Dash Snow's notorious Nest, which preceded Black Acid Co-op at Deitch's Grand Street location in the summer of 2007-was the uniquely nihilistic quality of the psychosis (both individual and collective, pathological and pharmacological) they put on display. Framed by the "War on Terror" and the global financial crash, these installations were, in my view, rather like a bad trip-the kind that left you with grime under your skin,"

Anarchic installations like Black Acid Co-op and Nest transformed gallery spaces into immersive stage-like environments—clandestine drug labs, Chinatown stores, pirate radio stations—requiring visitors to assume legal risk. These works foregrounded individual and collective psychosis, blending pathological and pharmacological elements into a uniquely nihilistic aesthetic. Situated against the War on Terror and the global financial crash, the installations produced sensations comparable to a bad trip: grime under the skin and vertigo at an abyss threatening politics and history. The decade's cultural mood crystallized around methamphetamine as a metaphor for rapid, violent collapse of hope, replacing earlier drug-associated metaphors.

Read at Artforum