My Date With Andy Warhol, part 2

After I had fully absorbed the first room (to which I eventually returned to sit in the speaker booths and watch the screen tests some more) I made my way to the ramp. For those of you who haven't been the the Wexner Center, its on an angle:

So one side is a ramp that goes from the first floor to the top, then there's a top area that spans the entire width, and there are two staggered rooms on the other side. On the wall of the ramp there were pictures and quotes from him up high, and 25 or 30 TVs playing clips of the Factory Diaries at eye level. The Factory Diaries are basically home movies from the Factory, there is footage from photo shoots, people hanging out, Andy on the phone, etc. Each TV had two sets of headphones attached so that you could listen in. My favorite, unsurprisingly, was the one where David Bowie and his band were visiting in 1971. He looked pretty uncomfortable when he knew the camera was on him, but later he had a really great conversation with a guy who hung around the Factory (I don't know his name). They were talking about music- Bowie recommended a few artists to the guy, and the guy was telling him about some of his favorite bands. Bowie was really excited that he had recently found a Lenny Bruce record for $2, and then was aghast to hear that British records cost $7 in the States. It was incredibly charming. I found this on youtube, and even though you can't hear anything, you might get a kick out of watching it:

At the top of the ramp, there were four different things. The first was some kind of time capsule which I didn't think was interesting at all. Next to that was this tiny little dark room with a screen on the far wall and speakers mounted inside, where they were showing the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I had never seen footage of it before, but it was absolutely hypnotizing. The combination of haunting music by the Velvet Underground, and the flashing multi-colored lighting, and the trippy dancing made it seem like they really captured what it felt like to be on shit-tons of drugs in the late 60s.
Here's a clip:

The next installation was a platform with maybe 50 more TVs, with a stool in front of each one of them. Each one was showing episodes from the two cable tv shows he created: Andy Warhol's TV, and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes. I wasn't too terribly interested here, it was mostly interviews, many with now obscure people, but I did watch an episode of Andy Warhol's TV in which he sat at a table with Lisa Robinson, Debbie Harry, and Chris Stein and they tried to explain the music industry to him.

At the top of the building, there was an installation piece called "Silver Clouds." They sectioned off the top of the ramp with ropes hanging from the tall (30 feet?) ceiling, and inside a dozed 4 foot, pillow-shaped, silver mylar balloons that floated around the space, powered by box fans mounted on the ceiling. Viewers were encouraged to touch the "silver clouds", which was particularly entertaining for the little kids that had been dragged along. While I myself didn't play withe them, I enjoyed stepping into the space and watching both kids and adults take part in the capturing and releasing of the silver clouds.

To be continued...