When Art Pranksters Invaded Melrose Place

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the mid-1990s, the prime time drama Melrose Place became a home to hundreds of pieces of contemporary art—and no one noticed. In this episode, Isaac Butler tells the story of the artist collective that smuggled subversive quilts, sperm-shaped pool floats, and dozens of other provocative works onto the set of the hit TV show. The project, In the Name of the Place, inspired a real-life exhibition and tested the ability of mass media to get us to see what’s right in front of our faces. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin and Katie Shepherd. This episode was written and reported by Isaac Butler and produced by Benjamin Frisch. Derek John is executive producer. Joel Meyer is senior editor/producer. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. Thank you to Jamie Bennett, JJ Bersch, Mark Flood, and Cynthia Carr, whose book On Edge: Performance at the End of the 20th Century inspired this episode. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you’re a fan of the show, we’d love for you to sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring without any ads. Their support is also crucial to our work. So please go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Music
0:10.0	Lad Brooks Live, the new way to win thousands of free tickets to electrifying live events.
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0:25.0	Enter free draws to win event tickets from designated list
0:28.0	to win per week restrictions and TNC's apply.
0:35.0	Hi, I'm here with Isaac Butler,
0:37.0	a cultural critic and historian who you may remember from the episode we did about method acting back in 2022.
0:43.0	Hey, Willa.
0:44.0	Isaac, I would really like you to tell us about this art exhibition that was put on in the late 1990s in Los Angeles
0:49.0	that was full of cheeky, funny, slightly mysterious work that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in an art museum.
0:56.0	Sure, yeah.
0:57.0	So let me just describe a few of the pieces for you.
1:00.0	There was a pool float, but instead of a normal pool float, it looked like a sperm about to fertilize an egg.
1:07.0	There was a clock where all the numbers on the clock have been replaced with images of bacteria and viruses.
1:15.0	There was a quilt, but the pattern on the quilt was the chemical formula for the abortion pill.
1:22.0	It was a lot of work like that.
1:24.0	I have to confess that I find this all like cool and delightful and I kind of covered it.
1:30.0	Like I would put that clock in my house and I certainly wish that I could have seen the show.
1:36.0	Yeah, but you know, the amazing thing is is that you probably did actually see this work and so did millions of Americans.
1:44.0	This is a story that I learned about while I was researching the new book I'm working on,
1:49.0	which takes place in the art world in the 80s and 90s.
	...

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