0:00

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Please subscribe now.

0:37

Hi, I'm here with Isaac Butler, a

0:39

cultural critic and historian who you may remember

0:41

from the episode we did about method acting back

0:44

in 2022. Hey, Willa. Isaac,

0:46

I would really like you to tell us about this art exhibition

0:49

that was put on in the late 1990s in Los

0:51

Angeles that was full of cheeky, funny,

0:53

slightly mysterious work that you wouldn't necessarily

0:56

expect to see in an art museum. Sure.

0:58

Yeah. So let me just describe a

1:00

few of the pieces for you. There was a pool

1:03

float, but instead of a normal

1:06

pool float, it looked like a sperm about

1:08

to fertilize an egg. There was

1:10

a clock where all the numbers

1:13

on the clock have been replaced with images of

1:15

bacteria and viruses. There

1:17

was a quilt, but the pattern on the

1:20

quilt was the chemical formula for

1:22

the abortion pill. It was it was a

1:24

lot of work like that.

1:26

I have to confess that I find this all like

1:28

cool and delightful and

1:31

I kind of covet it. Like I would put

1:33

that clock in my house and I certainly

1:36

wish that I could have seen the show.

1:37

Yeah. But, you know, the amazing thing

1:40

is, is that you probably did

1:42

actually see this work. And so did

1:44

millions of Americans. This

1:47

is a story that I learned about while I was

1:49

researching the new book I'm working on, which takes

1:51

place in the art world in the 80s and 90s. All

1:54

of this work was masterminded by an

1:56

artist named Mel Chin. And to

1:58

give you a sense of what Mel's like.

1:59

When I asked him where he was in his career when he started

2:02

doing this, this is what he said. Well,

2:05

my career, I don't think about

2:07

my art making and practice

2:10

as a career. Mel is being very

2:12

modest here. He is a conceptual artist

2:14

known for everything from traditional paintings

2:16

to giant landscape art. And

2:19

he has also won a MacArthur Genius

2:21

Grant. And back in the early 1990s,

2:24

he was commissioned to take part in that show

2:26

we mentioned earlier. It was called

2:28

Uncommon Sense, and it was a group

2:30

show at the Museum of Contemporary Art

2:33

where the museum commissioned artists to

2:35

create work that upended the traditional

2:37

relationship between artists and spectators.

2:40

And Mel was thinking about this commission

2:42

and how to make something that might also

2:44

speak to Los Angeles when

2:47

he was on an airplane.

2:48

And I remember looking out the window,

2:50

it might have been over Kansas or some

2:53

Midwestern state, and

2:56

the lights were on. I thought

2:58

it was to think LA is in the air. It's

3:01

through microwave transmission. And

3:04

it's through the television that's on down there.

3:10

Television made in LA was

3:13

in the atmosphere, and it was being beamed

3:15

down to Kansas and the rest of the country

3:17

too. What if you could take those microwave

3:20

transmissions, those little bits

3:22

of television, those pieces of LA, and

3:25

harness them to introduce people

3:27

to new art and ideas?

3:31

He was still thinking about all of this when he got home, and

3:33

when he walked in the door, his

3:35

wife was watching TV. And

3:39

there was a huge blonde head,

3:41

a

3:42

blonde haired head in

3:44

the middle of the screen, and

3:46

I think she said, that's Heather

3:48

Locklear. Sorry, Menace. You're fired.

3:51

You are

3:51

a pathetic, sick excuse for a man. And

3:53

if my mother wants you so badly, she can have you and all

3:55

the crap that comes with you. She moved her

3:57

head, and there was a painting

3:59

behind it.

4:01

I said, that's it.

4:03

It will be Melrose Place.

4:12

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa

4:14

Paskin.

4:16

In the mid-1990s, a collective of roughly 100

4:19

artists would spend three years smuggling

4:21

sperm floats, viral clocks, and dozens

4:23

of other pieces of provocative art onto

4:26

the set of the hit primetime soap opera

4:28

Melrose Place. They called themselves

4:30

the Gala Committee and they called their

4:32

project in the name of the

4:35

place. Today, Isaac Butler

4:37

is going to tell the story of this unlikely

4:40

art installation, a tremendous

4:43

feat of art hijinks that

4:45

hit right up against the limitations

4:48

of mass media to get us

4:50

to see what's right in front of our faces.

4:53

So today on Decoder Ring, how

4:55

did Melrose Place become the

4:58

home of hundreds of pieces

5:00

of contemporary

5:01

art? And why did

5:03

no one know that?

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5:58

in 1994.

6:02

What he wanted to do was something like an art heist,

6:05

but in reverse. Instead of stealing

6:07

art from a museum, he wanted

6:09

to smuggle art into television.

6:15

Now in any good heist movie, the first thing you need

6:17

to do is assemble your crew. You need

6:19

a demolition guy, a pickpocket, an

6:21

actor, an electronics expert, and so on.

6:24

Mel, well, he didn't really have any

6:26

of that. What he had instead were

6:28

students, a lot of students.

6:31

Mel was teaching both at CalArts in Los Angeles

6:34

and at the University of Georgia in Athens.

6:37

He introduced the concept of the project in class

6:40

the day after Halloween, which it turns

6:42

out the CalArts crew took very

6:44

seriously. People still had

6:46

blood dripping from their mouths. It

6:49

was a motley crew and I introduced

6:51

the concept and people

6:54

thought I was kidding. We had just had our Halloween

6:57

party, which was legendary at CalArts.

7:00

John LaPointe was a student of Mel's. Then

7:02

met this crazy dude who was all very

7:04

serious in photos and wearing gray suits

7:06

and stuff and he was kind

7:09

of a crazy son of a bitch. After

7:14

Mel explained the idea, John, who was

7:16

one of the first to join the project, was instantly

7:19

intrigued. His mind started to

7:21

whirr. How would one, you

7:24

know, insert art? What would you make

7:26

in the first, what would you talk about? What would you do if you had access?

7:28

What would you do? They

7:30

started trying to figure all this out. First,

7:33

they gave themselves a name, the Gala Committee,

7:36

the G.A. for Georgia, the L.A.

7:38

for Los Angeles, both of the places where

7:40

Mel was teaching. Second, they

7:42

decided how it would be organized, non-hierarchically.

7:46

It couldn't just be the Mel Chin

7:49

Show. And third, they

7:51

also made a decision about how the committee

7:53

would operate. The HICE crew would have to

7:55

do it secretly. We have to keep it

7:57

quiet. We have to. Uh,

8:00

be careful. The reason

8:02

they wanted to keep it under wraps had to

8:04

do with their inspirations, which also

8:07

used stealth to their advantage. One

8:09

was something as old as the soap operas

8:12

themselves. The

8:19

television is a modern etching

8:21

tool, etching into our

8:23

brains products. Cause that's

8:25

what a soap opera is. It was invented

8:28

to sell product and place things

8:30

appropriately in our minds. The

8:33

soap opera got its name way back in

8:35

the 1930s and forties when they were seen

8:37

as vehicles for companies to sell household

8:40

products to homemakers. By

8:42

the time Melrose place was on the air, product

8:44

placement was a fixture of American television

8:47

and movies. But instead

8:49

of announcing itself the way it did in the early

8:51

days of television, product placement

8:54

in the 1990s relied on subtlety. Instead

8:57

of saying a show was brought to you by Coca-Cola,

9:00

you would just see your favorite characters drink

9:02

Coca-Cola. The gala committee

9:04

wanted to use this technique, but to place

9:07

art concepts instead of products. A

9:11

second inspiration was an anti-capitalist

9:13

art making strategy called culture

9:15

jamming. John LaPointe. There were lots

9:17

of instances of people using

9:20

early mass communication tools or group

9:22

communication tools to playfully

9:25

screw with popular culture.

9:27

And, uh,

9:28

you know, this was pre-internet day. So what else

9:30

are you going to do? Right? Culture jamming was a

9:32

leftist practice of pranksterism that

9:35

used impish humor to critique the systems

9:37

of big business and social conservatism

9:40

that have become intertwined during the Reagan

9:42

administration. One of the most

9:44

famous examples was something called the

9:46

Barbie Liberation Organization,

9:49

in which artists surreptitiously

9:51

swapped the voice boxes on talking

9:53

Barbies and GI Joes. And on Christmas

9:56

morning, talking Barbies,

9:58

like, let's go kill them. And GI Joe

10:00

was like, you know, I like baking. And

10:02

he made national news. In press releases,

10:05

the group claims to have gotten 300

10:08

altered Barbies and GI Joes

10:10

onto store shelves in 43 states. Another

10:15

inspiration was less whimsical, viruses.

10:18

At the time, the idea of virality

10:21

was everywhere. With the advent

10:23

of the internet, hackers and computer

10:25

viruses were taking over the public

10:27

imagination. And the phrase internet

10:30

meme was coined in 1993

10:32

to describe a new viral way

10:34

that ideas were spreading. But

10:37

most urgently, this was also

10:39

the height of the AIDS crisis. I was

10:41

making all those biological associations,

10:44

medical associations as well, especially

10:47

in the wake of the AIDS epidemic

10:50

and the tragedy. We wanted to

10:52

do a creative response. The

10:55

notion was that the soap opera would be the host,

10:57

the gala committee would be the virus and

11:00

their art was the RNA, transforming

11:02

the show into a carrier for new ideas.

11:05

So now the gala committee had

11:08

its name,

11:08

its concept, its team and

11:11

its approach. All they had to do

11:13

was, you know, smuggle

11:15

their work onto a hugely successful,

11:18

closely observed TV show whose

11:20

scripts were guarded, like state secrets.

11:30

Today,

11:32

hip-hop dominates pop culture, but

11:35

it wasn't always like that. And to tell the

11:37

story of how that changed, I want to take

11:39

you back to a very special year

11:41

in rap. 88, it

11:44

was too much good music. The world was on

11:46

fire. Yeah. I'm Will

11:48

Smith. This is class of 88. My

11:51

new podcast about the moments, albums

11:54

and artists that inspired a

11:56

sonic revolution and secured

11:59

1980s. as one of hip-hop's most

12:01

important years. We'll talk to the people

12:03

who were there. And most of all, we'll

12:05

bring you some amazing stories. You

12:07

know what my biggest memory

12:10

from that tour is? It was

12:12

your birthday. Yes, and you brought me

12:14

to Shod Day. Life-size,

12:17

hard work, cut out. This is

12:19

class of 88, the story

12:21

of a year that changed hip-hop. Listen

12:23

to class of 88 wherever you get

12:25

your podcasts. You can binge the entire

12:27

series right now on the Amazon

12:30

Music app

12:30

for Audible.

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Apple. You earn 3% daily cash

12:36

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12:38

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12:41

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12:43

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12:45

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12:47

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13:07

The very reason that the Gala Committee wanted

13:09

to place their art on Melrose Place was

13:11

also exactly the reason doing so seemed

13:14

so unlikely. Melrose

13:16

Place was a huge, huge

13:18

hit. Emily Nussbaum is a writer

13:21

at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize-winning

13:23

TV critic. It was a nighttime soap opera,

13:26

but it absolutely hit

13:28

it big at that moment. Hitting it

13:30

big also meant something different then than

13:32

it does now. Back then, there

13:34

were only four TV networks, and one of

13:36

them was an upstart that had only launched

13:38

in 1986 called Fox.

13:42

Fox tried to set itself apart by being

13:44

younger and more provocative than the three

13:46

established networks. It aired shows

13:48

like The Simpsons, Married with Children, and

13:51

Beverly Hills, 90210.

13:52

Hey,

13:55

John. Hey, Kelly. I

13:58

don't know if you're just talking.

15:59

And this woman, she's

16:03

a dangerous prude. But

16:06

then Rita, she's the strong one, she

16:08

protects us from her. Have you ever

16:10

read the book of Sibyl? At its peak, Melrose

16:13

was watched by nearly 15 million

16:15

people. In real time. It

16:18

was the kind of show for which there were weekly

16:20

viewing parties. Everyone seemed

16:22

to be watching it. From supporting characters

16:24

on Seinfeld to the slackers of reality bites.

16:27

Melrose played as a really

16:29

good show.

16:29

And

16:58

then disappearing, I believe for like 10 or 12

17:00

episodes. And then coming

17:02

back from the dead.

17:05

You silly.

17:07

You want to touch me to make sure I'm real? What's

17:10

going on? Is that Kimberly? Why

17:12

is she back? What's happening? And then she walks

17:15

into the bathroom and she has this beautiful

17:17

red hair. And she pulls off

17:19

her wig. This is very dramatic.

17:22

She takes her fingers and pulls it off her. And she

17:24

has a shaved head and a

17:26

huge, extremely dramatic scar

17:28

on the side.

17:32

I was at a party with other people and people just

17:35

like screamed with delight.

17:38

Like, you know, we laughed, but we gasped.

17:41

I mean, it was, which is the kind of laughing

17:44

and gasping at the same time is exactly

17:47

the reaction that makes a prime time

17:49

soap a hit.

17:51

One thing Melrose was not, however,

17:54

was especially political. The closest

17:56

they got to any kind of political statement

17:59

was a character named. Matt, who is gay

18:01

and out of the closet, and not

18:04

much else. Is that kind of gay? Yeah,

18:06

what about it? The small thing I die,

18:09

I'm just not used to seeing somebody so upfront about

18:11

it. Oh gosh, I'm late for surgery, man. Matt,

18:13

the gay character who rarely has a boyfriend

18:16

and barely has a personality, is

18:18

a perfect summation of the show's point

18:20

of view. Just daring enough

18:22

to get attention, but not enough to actually

18:25

risk turning off viewers.

18:27

So Melrose was not only a gargantuan

18:29

rating success overseen by a powerful

18:32

name brand producer, it was politically

18:34

pretty timid. And the gala committee's

18:36

whole project was explicitly, if

18:39

slightly, political. But

18:41

the committee was undeterred, as in any

18:43

good heist they just needed an inside

18:46

man. Or, as it turned out,

18:49

an inside woman. We were watching Melrose Place,

18:51

and we noticed in the credits

18:54

the name Devers Siegel came up as the set

18:56

decorator. On La Pointe, one of the earliest

18:58

members of the gala committee, again. We

19:01

grabbed the phone book, and lo and behold, Devers

19:03

Siegel was listed.

19:04

So we called Devers Siegel.

19:06

He

19:07

called me a few times,

19:09

and I ignored him.

19:11

Devers Siegel now goes by Devers

19:13

Siegel Constantino. We connected

19:16

on a spotty telephone line to talk about

19:18

her time at Melrose. She told

19:20

me that when she finally stopped ignoring Melchin's

19:22

calls, it turned out the project's politics,

19:25

its interest in product placement and virality

19:28

were right up her alley. Can

19:30

you tell me about that?

19:31

Well, I was very leftist, active

19:34

person. I felt that

19:37

Melrose Place was not

19:40

in line with my belief.

19:42

And so instead of saying no to this wacky

19:45

project, she said, free art, and

19:47

I don't have to pay royalties for it, and it looks

19:49

interesting, and it's left wing, bring

19:53

it. Alright, this just got a little weird and real.

19:55

It was like, oh shit.

22:02

Please. I

22:05

thought morning was your favorite time. Any

22:08

morning but this one. During

22:11

this episode, Lothario Dr. Peter

22:13

Barnes and his current lover wake up

22:15

in his apartment and if you

22:17

know what you're looking for, you can

22:20

see that the pattern on his sheets is

22:22

unrolled condoms. At

22:25

the time, the FCC wouldn't allow unrolled

22:27

condoms to be shown on air. John

22:30

LaPointe again. That was the moon landing,

22:32

as I like to call it. That was the first, like, oh

22:34

my God, it actually is happening.

22:39

Safety sheets was important because until

22:41

then, it wasn't totally clear to the gala

22:43

committee what was happening. They

22:45

sent the pieces off, but they didn't know how

22:48

or if they would be used until they

22:50

saw them show up on television. And we

22:52

would gather in a bar and had a pizza joint

22:54

and we'd watch the show. It largely

22:57

was hit or miss. It largely was miss

22:59

because you never quite knew what

23:02

would end up on the cutting room floor. And

23:04

lots of pieces did. Even the

23:06

ones that made it onto TV, like the viral

23:08

clock and the sperm pool float, were pretty

23:10

hard to see. But several months

23:12

into the project, this haphazard relationship

23:15

got more serious. It was thanks

23:17

to a piece called Total Proof.

23:19

Now I want to go all out on this. Radio

23:21

and print ads, the best coverage and

23:23

quality. D&D is going to make sure

23:26

that this is the most successful new club this year.

23:27

D&D was a cutthroat

23:30

fictional advertising firm many characters

23:32

on Melrose Place worked for. The

23:34

gala committee often designed posters

23:36

that represented D&D's work. Total

23:39

Proof was one of these posters, and it was a parody

23:41

of Absolute Vodka's ubiquitous 1990s

23:45

print ad campaign. So

23:47

you may remember these. They all show a

23:49

bottle of Absolute Vodka, but with some

23:51

variation to it, that was then reflected

23:53

in the ad's text. Like a bottle

23:55

would be drawn by Keith Haring and say, Absolute

23:58

Haring underneath it. or it would have

24:00

a halo over it with the slogan, absolute

24:03

perfection. The gala committee's

24:05

version, well, it was an

24:07

aerial photograph of the wreckage of the Oklahoma

24:10

city bombing, which at that point was

24:12

the largest and deadliest terrorist attack

24:14

on US soil. And it had happened

24:17

less than a year earlier. The

24:19

committee took that photograph and

24:21

photoshopped it to be in the shape of a liquor

24:23

bottle with the slogan, total

24:26

proof underneath it. This was the

24:28

stealth culture jamming we're hacking, basically

24:30

at this point. And like, tihi-hi,

24:32

they don't know what we're doing. Total proof

24:35

was the gala committee at its culture jammiest,

24:38

a provocative spit take on a popular

24:40

ad campaign highlighting how capitalism

24:43

can commodify anything. But

24:46

unlike the other gala committee work to this

24:48

point, total proof did not go

24:50

unnoticed by the powers that be at

24:52

Melrose Place.

24:57

The first time you saw that actor, it was a period drama.

25:02

And what a handsome mustache that was. Then

25:06

in that spaghetti Western, it was even longer. Wow,

25:12

that handlebar style really got you into

25:15

police drama. Hang on, are you sure that

25:17

was the same actor? Hmm,

25:19

still enjoyed it. I'm not sure. I'm

25:22

not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

25:24

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

25:26

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Total proof, the vodka ad with the

26:05

Oklahoma City bombing on it made its

26:07

way onto set for the shooting of season

26:10

four's 26th episode called

26:12

Triumph of the Bill. Before

26:15

filming began for the day, a crew member noticed

26:17

it. The line producer at

26:19

the time had seen

26:21

it

26:22

and

26:23

objected

26:24

and took it down. Frank South was a

26:26

writer and executive producer on Melrose Place.

26:28

Deborah came to me with that and said, well,

26:31

you're going to hear about this. And this is why I did

26:33

it. And shoot, I

26:35

was really enthusiastic.

26:37

It turns out that prior to being

26:39

a writer for television, Frank South was

26:41

actually a performance artist who himself

26:44

had been part of a collective running

26:46

a gallery and performance space in downtown

26:48

New York. When Deborah

26:51

told him about the project, not only was

26:53

he down to let the Total Proof poster appear

26:55

on air, he was down to meet with Mel

26:57

Chin. They had lunch, hit

26:59

it off, and Frank decided to loop

27:02

the gala committee into the production process

27:04

of the show, though not his

27:06

boss, the show's mastermind, Aaron

27:09

Spelling. I always intended to tell Aaron

27:11

about it,

27:12

you know, what I was doing. But at one

27:14

point I decided not to because

27:16

it was getting so

27:18

integral.

27:19

You know, I just like that old thing, you

27:21

know, apologize, don't ask permission.

27:27

Everything immediately got more

27:29

collaborative. Melrose Place's production

27:31

team became so intertwined with the project

27:34

that they would eventually be added to the official

27:36

list of gala committee members. The

27:38

project also got more daring, pointed

27:41

and ambitious. The artists knew

27:44

their work would air and they could help implement

27:46

on-site installations. So

27:48

for example, the committee went to the set

27:51

of shooters, the bar where the characters

27:53

drink and replaced all the labels

27:55

on the alcohol bottles with text

27:57

relating the history of agribusiness, alcohol,

28:00

and slavery in America. They

28:02

designed an ad campaign for the character Billy

28:05

called Family Values that featured

28:07

silhouettes of same-sex couples with children.

28:10

Building off of the success of Safety Sheets,

28:12

they created that quilt we talked about earlier,

28:15

the one with the chemical formula for the abortion

28:17

pill printed on it at a time when reproductive

28:19

choice was rarely discussed on TV. Gala

28:23

committee member Constance Penley. For

28:25

two entire

28:26

episodes, we had Allison,

28:28

who was confined to her home with

28:31

a difficult pregnancy, just

28:33

be draped in this

28:36

beautiful quilt. No arguments.

28:39

We're supposed to be resting and taking care of our kid. Everything

28:42

else is secondary. None of the doctors are,

28:44

not mine. You're right. I

28:47

know.

28:47

So that was our way

28:50

to

28:51

be able to get speech

28:52

about reproductive choice

28:54

back onto network television.

28:59

One of their most audacious pieces, Food

29:01

for Thought hid in the most unlikely

29:04

and ubiquitous of places. And

29:06

what about the Chinese takeout bags? Can you talk

29:08

a little bit about that? Because knowing

29:11

of the reruns and its worldwide

29:14

syndication and distribution, it

29:16

did not have to be limited

29:19

to English-speaking language. And

29:21

so they wrote provocative phrases in

29:23

Mandarin on takeout containers. On

29:27

one, they put the Chinese character for turmoil

29:29

that had been used to describe the Tiananmen Square

29:31

protests next to the character

29:33

for human rights. On another, they

29:35

wrote Stolen Artifacts National

29:38

Treasure, a reference to colonial looting.

29:41

You know, a billion people could read Chinese. The

29:43

idea was having that power to

29:46

speak to someone, just through

29:48

a casual viewing of a show and

29:50

say, wait a minute, I read Chinese.

29:52

And that's a message that is

29:54

not even allowed.

30:00

Eventually, the committee was even asked

30:02

to help flesh out the character of Samantha,

30:05

who's an artist on Melrose Place. Ah,

30:08

it's the painting I gave Craig! You

30:12

steal it, do you? Of

30:14

course not.

30:15

15 of the women

30:17

who worked on the gala committee were

30:20

flown to Grand Arts in

30:22

Kansas City to be able to

30:24

brainstorm this

30:27

new character, but also

30:29

to

30:30

create her artwork.

30:32

Samantha's brightly colored art,

30:35

which was created by gala committee members,

30:37

referenced the sunny pools and California

30:40

landscapes of David Hockney, but

30:42

also contained a hidden darkness,

30:45

the ghostly echo of the tragic

30:47

histories of Los Angeles.

30:49

We made our locations be places

30:51

where horrific violence

30:54

had occurred.

30:55

You know, locations where the Manson

30:58

murders occurred, the

31:00

Ambassador Hotel where Robert F. Kennedy

31:02

was assassinated.

31:04

Together, the production staff and

31:06

the gala committee had created dozens

31:08

of covert works of art and hidden

31:10

them in plain sight. Other popular

31:13

primetime entertainment wasn't showing unrolled

31:15

condoms on television or nodding

31:17

at abortion or alluding to the legacy

31:20

of slavery, but a group of scrappy

31:22

artists and a pop cultural phenomenon

31:24

did and reached an audience

31:27

of millions and millions of

31:29

people. The only wrinkle

31:31

was... no one watching

31:34

seems to have really seen it. After

31:43

placing over a hundred pieces of art on

31:45

Melrose Place over the course of three seasons,

31:48

it finally came time for the gala

31:50

committee to show the world what they had been up

31:52

to. In March of 1997, In

31:55

the Name of the Place opened as part of

31:57

the Museum of Contemporary Art's Common

32:00

Sense exhibit. They weren't the only

32:03

ones with wild ideas about how to resink

32:05

the museum show. Karen Finley had

32:08

live nude drawing classes

32:11

going on and Carlson and Marilyn

32:13

Strom had a rodeo with a

32:15

live horse in the middle of the galleries.

32:19

Tom Finkelperl is one of the curators

32:22

of Uncommon Sense. There was a project

32:25

that included 1.1 million pounds

32:27

of crushed glass that was installed

32:30

by the sanitation department of LA. The

32:33

museum even let the gala committee

32:35

recreate Shooter's Bar and allowed

32:37

patrons to drink at it.

32:41

Before the show opened at Mocha, the gala

32:43

committee and the staff at Melrose had one

32:45

last hurrah filming a pivotal

32:47

scene of an episode of Melrose within

32:50

the exhibit of objects that had been

32:52

previously seen on the television

32:54

show. Mel is actually in this scene.

32:58

He's lurking in the background walking through

33:06

the exhibit with Deborah Siegel-Constantino.

33:12

I think it's about a man's journey through

33:14

war, memory.

33:17

There was a fake director, there was

33:19

a fake

33:20

museum communications

33:21

officer, there

33:24

was art

33:24

that wasn't art but

33:26

it was art. Julie Lazar, co-curator

33:29

of Uncommon Sense, loved that Melrose

33:31

placed films at the museum. It raised

33:34

all the central questions of the exhibit

33:36

itself.

33:37

I thought it was fantastic because it parallels

33:41

was the work that was on the screen

33:43

and set behind the actors

33:46

art. When was it art? Was

33:48

it on the television show or was it

33:50

when they came to the gallery and it was hanging

33:53

behind them?

33:54

Clearly the gallerists, the gala

33:57

committee, and the Melrose production team were

33:59

having fun. But once uncommon

34:01

sense was open to the public, not

34:03

everyone was amused. The show got like

34:06

exceedingly bad reviews.

34:08

Actually, there's words that are

34:11

just burned into my consciousness.

34:14

Those words come from the New York Times's

34:16

Roberta Smith in a review that

34:18

was titled A Lot to See, but

34:21

Not an Artwork in Sight. She

34:23

said of Gala's work that it has the

34:25

raw, discombobulated feeling of

34:27

a group show of young, undeveloped

34:30

artists. One of the things she said in that review

34:32

also, which is also sort of true, is

34:35

that it seems like the most

34:37

profound and interesting or something like that experience

34:40

happened before the show opened. Asking

34:42

questions about art's purpose and methods of

34:44

creation doesn't always result in

34:47

work that people enjoy, or

34:49

even notice. Did you happen to notice

34:52

that with some regularity, Melrose

34:55

used very, very odd

34:58

props and set pieces that

35:00

had actually been designed by

35:03

an experimental art collective? I

35:05

would love to claim that I did notice

35:07

that because it's a fascinating,

35:10

completely bizarre piece of

35:13

Melrose plays history, but no. The answer

35:15

to that question is no. I had no awareness

35:18

of this whatsoever. In

35:22

fact, almost anyone who heard

35:24

about the experiment only learned about

35:26

it after the fact. In the art reviews

35:28

of the show and in an article for The New Yorker,

35:31

this was even true when it came to

35:33

the head honcho of Melrose plays. Frank

35:36

South, the producer and writer who embraced

35:38

the project, was at the office early one

35:40

morning when Aaron Spelling summoned

35:42

him. He walked into his desk

35:45

across this acre of shag carpet.

35:47

He's

35:48

saying, so,

35:50

Frank,

35:52

when did you know this was going on?

35:53

Oh,

35:54

well, you

35:55

know, the last

35:57

year and a half, two years.

36:00

And he goes, uh-huh.

36:03

So when were you going to tell me? He

36:06

said, oh,

36:10

Aaron, I figured as

36:12

late as possible, I was going to tell you.

36:14

Spelling wasn't known for bursts of rage,

36:17

but Frank could see he wasn't happy. It

36:19

just came down to, you understand, this

36:21

is my show, you know? I

36:25

said, yeah, I don't want anything

36:27

that would ever harm the show. And

36:30

I said, I know.

36:31

One of the things he said is, who pays

36:33

for all this shit?

36:34

Where does it all come from? Who's paying for it?

36:36

Are we paying for this? This isn't in our budget. And

36:39

I said, no, it's a

36:41

money-saving operation.

36:43

It's for free.

36:45

And that

36:47

mollified him a little.

36:51

I asked the people I spoke to about the

36:53

work's initial invisibility. And

36:56

at the time, were they hoping people

36:58

might notice? Of course.

36:59

Sure, a

37:01

little. But this is commonplace

37:03

with art. Some of it connects with the public,

37:06

and most of it doesn't. It's just, you

37:08

don't usually get it in front of an audience

37:10

of 15 million people to begin with. In

37:14

the name of the place closed in the summer of 1997. Two

37:17

years later, Melrose Place went off the

37:19

air. It seemed that, like

37:21

a lot of interesting art projects, in the name

37:24

of the place was destined to be forgotten by

37:26

everyone other than the Gala Committee. But

37:29

then, one of the committee's original

37:31

inspirations turned out to be more

37:33

apt than they could have anticipated. It's

37:35

about patients like a virus

37:38

entering your world.

37:41

It takes time for it to gestate. The

37:44

project gradually took on a new life.

37:47

Not on TV, not to millions

37:49

of people, but a new life nonetheless.

37:53

In 1998, the objects from in the name

37:55

of the place were auctioned off by Sotheby's, with

37:57

the proceeds going to charity. exhibited

38:00

in Korea and Kansas City and New

38:02

Orleans. In the

38:04

fall of 2016, Red Bull Gallery

38:07

in New York, itself an experimented branded

38:10

content by an energy drink, remounted

38:12

in the name of the place and this time the

38:15

reviews were good. For

38:17

John Lapointe, this kind of baton passing

38:19

is immensely gratifying. I mean

38:21

that's the whole tradition of art is, you know,

38:24

just passing on as a conversation, it constantly builds

38:26

upon itself. Melrose

38:29

Place, a one-time cultural juggernaut,

38:31

has less purchase than ever before, but

38:34

in the name of the place is still

38:36

replicating. It didn't go viral

38:39

in the sense of finding immediate widespread popularity,

38:42

but it wound up being viral

38:44

in the sense of slowly reaching more

38:47

and more hosts and spreading itself

38:49

throughout the ecosystem. First

38:52

it lived in the minds of artists and then

38:54

it jumped to the people making a TV show

38:56

and then to articles in magazines and newspapers

38:59

and then to museums around the world

39:02

and then most of all to the Internet,

39:04

where Melrose Place and all the work

39:06

it contained is just a few clicks

39:09

away. Now it has infected

39:11

its latest host, this show,

39:14

and it continues to spread to you. Go,

39:18

take a look for yourself, and then,

39:21

you know, pass it

39:23

on. Yeah, it's weird to just go, stop.

39:26

It's like, you need to email

39:28

me the other day, like, okay, here we go again.

39:40

This is Dakota Ray, I'm Isaac

39:42

Butler,

39:43

and I'm Willa Pasken. If you have any cultural

39:45

mysteries you want us to decode, please

39:48

email us at Decodering at Slate.com.

39:51

This episode was written and reported by

39:53

Isaac Butler. Decodering is produced by

39:55

Willa Pasken and Katie Shepard. This

39:58

episode was produced by Benjamin. Derek

40:01

John is executive producer, Joe Meier

40:03

is senior editor-producer, Merrick Jacob is

40:05

senior technical director. We'd like

40:07

to thank Jamie Bennett and also JJ

40:10

Bursch for educating Isaac on product placement, Mark

40:13

Flood for sharing his memories of the gala committee, and

40:15

to shout out Cynthia Carr's book, On

40:18

Edge, Performance at the End of the 20th

40:20

Century, which is where Isaac first

40:22

heard about all of this. If you want to see

40:25

some of the artwork from In the Name of the

40:27

Place, we'll include a link

40:28

in our show notes.

40:30

And please make sure to subscribe to our

40:32

feed to never miss an episode. Even

40:35

better, leave a review and rating wherever

40:37

you listen and tell your friends.

40:40

If you're a fan of the show, I'd also love

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for you to sign up for Slate Plus. As a

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And you also have total access to Slate's website,

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40:56

here at Decoder 8. So

40:58

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41:00

plus to join Slate Plus. We'll

41:03

see you next time.