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longer. And

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wow, that handlebar style really

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on, are you sure that was the same actor? Hmm,

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still enjoyed it. On Tubi, the

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things you love just keep going. Dab the

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banner to watch now.

1:05

Hi, I'm here with Isaac Butler, a

1:07

cultural critic and historian who you may remember

1:10

from the episode we did about method acting back

1:12

in 2022. Hey, Willa. Isaac,

1:14

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

1:17

that was put on in the late 1990s in Los Angeles that

1:20

was full of cheeky, funny, slightly

1:22

mysterious work that you wouldn't necessarily

1:24

expect to see in an art museum. Sure,

1:26

yeah. So let me just describe a few

1:29

of the pieces for you. There was a pool

1:31

float, but instead of a normal

1:34

pool float, it looked like a sperm about

1:36

to fertilize an egg. There was

1:38

a clock where all the numbers

1:41

on the clock have been replaced with images of

1:43

bacteria and viruses. There

1:46

was a quilt, but the pattern on the

1:48

quilt was the chemical formula for

1:50

the abortion pill. It was a

1:52

lot of work like that.

1:54

I have to confess that I find this all like

1:57

cool and delightful and

1:59

I kind of it, like I would put

2:01

that clock in my house and I certainly

2:04

wish that I could have seen the show. Yeah,

2:06

but you know the amazing thing is is that you

2:09

probably did actually see this

2:11

work and so did millions of

2:13

Americans. This is a story

2:15

that I learned about while I was researching

2:18

the new book I'm working on which takes place in the art

2:20

world in the 80s and 90s. All of

2:22

this work was masterminded by an artist

2:25

named Mel Chin. To give you a sense

2:27

of what Mel's like, when I asked him where he was in

2:29

his career when he started doing this, this is

2:31

what he said.

2:32

Well, my career

2:34

I don't think about my art making

2:37

and practice as a career. Mel

2:39

is being very modest here. He is

2:41

a conceptual artist known for everything from

2:44

traditional paintings to giant

2:45

landscape art and he has

2:47

also won a MacArthur Genius Grant.

2:50

And back in the early 1990s he

2:52

was commissioned to take part in that show

2:54

we mentioned earlier. It was called Uncommon

2:57

Sense and it was a group show at the

2:59

Museum of Contemporary Art where the museum

3:02

commissioned artists to create work that

3:04

upended the traditional relationship between

3:07

artist and spectator.

3:08

And Mel was thinking about this commission

3:10

and how to make something that might also

3:13

speak to Los Angeles when

3:15

he was on an

3:15

airplane. And I remember looking

3:18

out the window, am I over Kansas

3:20

or some Midwestern state?

3:24

The lights were on. I thought

3:26

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

3:29

through microwave transmission and

3:33

it's through the television that's on down

3:35

there.

3:39

Television made in LA was

3:41

in the atmosphere and it was being beamed

3:43

down to Kansas and the rest of the country

3:45

too. What if you could take those microwave

3:48

transmissions, those little bits

3:50

of television, those pieces of LA

3:53

and harness them to introduce

3:55

people to new art and ideas.

3:59

all of this when he got home and when he walked

4:02

in the door his wife

4:04

was watching TV. And

4:07

there was a huge blonde head,

4:09

a

4:10

blonde haired head in

4:12

the middle of the screen and I

4:15

think she said that's Heather Locklear.

4:17

Morning, Minnie. You're fired. Fired. You are

4:19

a pathetic, sick excuse for a man. If

4:21

my mother wants you so badly she can have you and all the crap

4:23

that comes with you. She moved her head

4:26

and there was a painting behind it. And

4:29

I said that's it.

4:31

It will be Melrose's place.

4:40

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa

4:43

Paskin. In the mid-1990s

4:45

a collective of roughly a hundred artists

4:47

would spend three years smuggling sperm

4:49

floats, viral clocks and dozens

4:51

of other pieces of provocative art onto

4:54

the set of the hit primetime soap opera

4:56

Melrose Place. They called themselves

4:58

the Gala Committee and they called their

5:01

project in the name of

5:03

the place. Today, Isaac Butler

5:05

is going to tell the story of this unlikely

5:08

art installation, a tremendous

5:11

feat of art hijinks that

5:13

hit right up against the limitations

5:16

of mass media to get us to

5:18

see what's right in front of our faces.

5:21

So today on Decoder Ring, how

5:24

did Melrose Place become the

5:26

home of hundreds of pieces

5:28

of contemporary

5:29

art? And why did

5:31

no one notice?

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apply.

6:26

So Mel Chin had his airplane epiphany

6:29

in 1994. What he wanted

6:31

to do was something like an art heist, but

6:33

in reverse. Instead of stealing

6:35

art from a museum, he wanted

6:37

to smuggle art in to television.

6:43

Now in any good heist movie, the first thing you

6:45

need to do is assemble your crew. You need

6:47

a demolition guy, a pickpocket, an

6:49

actor, an electronics expert, and so on.

6:52

Mel, well he didn't really have any

6:54

of that. What he had instead were

6:56

students. A lot of students.

6:59

Mel was teaching both at CalArts in Los Angeles

7:02

and at the University of Georgia in Athens.

7:05

He introduced the concept of the project in

7:07

class the day after Halloween, which

7:09

it turns out the CalArts crew took very

7:12

seriously. People still had

7:15

blood dripping from their mouths. It

7:17

was a motley crew and I introduced

7:19

the concept and people

7:23

thought I was kidding. We had just had our Halloween

7:25

party, which was legendary at CalArts.

7:28

John LaPointe was a student of Mel's. Then

7:30

met this crazy dude who was all very

7:32

serious in photos and wearing gray suits

7:35

and stuff and he was kind

7:37

of a crazy son of a bitch. After

7:42

Mel explaining the idea, John, who

7:44

was one of the first to join the project, was instantly

7:47

intrigued. His mind started to

7:49

whirr. How would one, you know,

7:53

insert art? What would you make of the first? What would you

7:55

talk about? What would you do if you had access? What would you do?

7:58

They started trying to figure out

7:59

this out. First, they gave

8:02

themselves a name, the Gala Committee, the

8:04

GA for Georgia, the LA for

8:06

Los Angeles, both of the places where Mel

8:08

was teaching. Second, they decided

8:11

how it would be organized, non-hierarchically.

8:14

It couldn't just be the Mel Chin

8:17

Show. And third, they

8:19

also made a decision about how the committee

8:21

would operate. The ICE crew would have to

8:23

do it secretly, we have to keep it

8:26

quiet, we have to

8:28

be careful. The reason

8:30

they wanted to keep it under wraps had to

8:32

do with their inspirations, which also

8:35

used stealth to their advantage. One

8:37

was something as old as the soap operas

8:40

themselves. The

8:42

guiding light presented by

8:45

Ivory Soap, the most famous soap in the world.

8:47

The television is a modern etching

8:49

tool, etching into our brains

8:52

products, because that's what a soap opera

8:55

is. It was invented to sell product

8:57

and place things appropriately in

9:00

our minds. The soap opera got

9:02

its name way back in the 1930s and 40s when they were seen

9:04

as vehicles

9:06

for companies to sell household products

9:08

to homemakers. By the time Melrose

9:11

Place was on the air, product placement

9:13

was a fixture of American television

9:15

and movies. But instead

9:17

of announcing itself the way it did in the early

9:20

days of television, product placement

9:22

in the 1990s relied on subtlety.

9:25

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

9:28

you would just see your favorite characters drink

9:30

Coca-Cola. The Gala Committee

9:33

wanted to use this technique but to place

9:35

art concepts instead of products. The

9:39

second inspiration was an anti-capitalist

9:41

art making strategy called culture

9:43

jamming. John LaPointe. There were lots

9:46

of instances of people using

9:48

early mass communication tools or

9:50

group communication tools to playfully

9:53

screw with popular culture.

9:55

And

9:56

you know this was pre-internet day so what else

9:58

you gonna do, right? Culture jamming was a

10:01

leftist practice of pranksterism

10:03

that used impish humor to critique the

10:05

systems of big business and social conservatism

10:08

that had become intertwined during the Reagan

10:10

administration. One of the most

10:12

famous examples was something called the

10:15

Barbie Liberation Organization,

10:17

in which artists surreptitiously swapped

10:20

the voice boxes on talking Barbies

10:22

and GI Joes. And on Christmas morning,

10:25

talking Barbies said like, let's go kill

10:27

them. And GI Joe was like, you know, I

10:29

like baking. And it made national news. In

10:32

press releases, the group claims to

10:34

have gotten 300 altered Barbies

10:37

and GI Joes onto store

10:39

shelves in 43 states. Another

10:43

inspiration was less whimsical, viruses.

10:47

At the time, the idea of virality

10:49

was everywhere. With the advent

10:51

of the internet, hackers and computer

10:53

viruses were taking over the public

10:55

imagination. And the phrase internet

10:58

meme was coined in 1993

11:00

to describe a new viral way

11:02

that ideas were spreading. But

11:05

most urgently, this was also

11:07

the height of the AIDS crisis. I was

11:09

making all those biological associations,

11:12

medical associations as well, especially

11:15

in the wake of the AIDS epidemic

11:18

and the tragedy. We wanted to

11:20

do a creative response. The

11:23

notion was that the soap opera would be the host,

11:26

the gala committee would be the virus and

11:28

their art was the RNA, transforming

11:30

the show into a carrier for new ideas.

11:34

So now the gala committee had its name,

11:37

its concept, its team and

11:39

its approach. All they had to do

11:41

was, you know, smuggle

11:43

their work onto a hugely successful,

11:46

closely observed TV show whose

11:48

scripts were guarded like state-seeking.

11:59

Today, hip-hop dominates pop

12:02

culture, but it wasn't always like that.

12:04

And to tell the story of how that changed,

12:06

I want to take you back to a very special

12:09

year in rap. 88. It

12:12

was too much good music. The world was on

12:14

fire. Fire, yeah. I'm Will

12:17

Smith. This is Class of 88, my

12:20

new podcast about the moments, albums,

12:22

and artists that inspired a

12:24

sonic revolution and secured 1988

12:28

as one of hip-hop's most important years. We'll

12:30

talk to the people who were there. And most

12:33

of all, we'll bring you some amazing

12:35

stories. You know what my biggest

12:37

memory from that tour

12:40

is? It was your birthday. Yes, and you

12:42

brought me to Shod Day. Life-size,

12:45

hardcore cut-out. This is

12:47

Class of 88, the story

12:49

of a year that changed hip-hop. Listen

12:51

to Class of 88 wherever you get

12:53

your podcasts. You can bench the entire

12:56

series right now on the Amazon

12:58

Music app

12:58

or Audible.

13:00

The very reason that the Gala committee wanted

13:03

to place their art on Melrose Place was

13:05

also exactly the reason doing so seemed

13:07

so unlikely. Melrose

13:10

Place was a huge, huge

13:12

hit. Emily Nussbaum is a writer

13:14

at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize-winning

13:17

TV critic. It was a nighttime soap opera,

13:19

but it absolutely hit

13:22

it big at that moment. Hitting it

13:24

big also meant something different then than

13:26

it does now. Back then, there

13:28

were only four TV networks, and one

13:30

of them was an upstart that had only launched

13:32

in 1986 called Fox.

13:35

Fox tried to set itself apart by being

13:38

younger and more provocative than the three

13:40

established networks. It aired shows

13:42

like The Simpsons, Married with Children, and

13:44

Beverly Hills, 90210.

13:46

Hey,

13:49

John. Hey, Kelly. Bryn

13:52

and I were just talking. Which do you think guys

13:54

like best gun girls long or short hair? That's

13:57

a deep question. Personally,

13:59

I prefer blondes. 90210 was

14:02

created by the god of the prime time soaps,

14:05

Aaron Spelling. Over three decades

14:07

he had become one of the most powerful people

14:10

in television, with hits like Charlie's

14:12

Angels, The Love Boat, and Dynasty.

14:15

And 90210 had helped put the fledgling

14:17

Fox network on the map. Mark Harris

14:20

is a cultural critic and historian who covered

14:22

television in the 1990s as a writer and

14:25

editor for Entertainment Weekly. Even though

14:27

everyone on Beverly Hills 90210

14:30

looked like they were 28 years old, it was still

14:34

set not just in high school, but like

14:36

freshman and sophomore year of high school at that

14:38

point. So there was only so much they could

14:41

do with the plot lines.

14:43

And I think Fox and Aaron Spelling

14:45

thought, why don't we do a spinoff

14:48

that is focused

14:49

on the lives of 20-somethings

14:52

and we can be a lot more

14:54

daring and a lot racier.

15:00

Melrose Place was that spinoff.

15:02

It premiered in 1992 and focused

15:05

on the complicated lives of the very attractive

15:08

and very horny residents of its

15:10

titular apartment complex. I

15:12

would say that the difference between Melrose

15:14

Place and previous prime

15:16

time soaps, there were two differences really. One

15:19

was a

15:20

taste for really

15:23

bizarre, ludicrous plot

15:25

lines. I mean,

15:27

they really had an appetite

15:29

for somebody going out of their minds.

15:38

The other thing that Melrose Place did that was really

15:40

different, they accelerated

15:43

through plot in this really

15:45

aggressive way. So there was this

15:47

absolute mandate to tune

15:50

in.

15:59

And Rita,

16:00

she's the strong one, she protects

16:02

us from her. Have you ever read the book symbol?

16:05

At its peak, Melrose was watched by

16:07

nearly 15 million people. In

16:10

real time. It was the kind of

16:12

show for which there were weekly viewing parties.

16:15

Everyone seemed to be watching it, from supporting

16:18

characters on Seinfeld to the slackers

16:20

of reality bites. Melrose bites

16:22

is a really good show. Can you

16:24

list a few of your favorite zany,

16:27

ludicrous plot developments on Melrose? Well

16:29

I think the one that everybody

16:30

remembers, and certainly

16:33

the one that I really loved, was

16:36

Kimberly, the character played by Marsha

16:38

Cross,

16:39

getting killed. Which

16:41

first of all was a big deal. Oh god no. Call 911.

16:44

Call 911. Call 911. Call 911.

16:48

Call 911. Call 911. Call 911.

16:50

Call 911. Call 911. Call 911.

16:54

Call 911. Call 911. Call 911.

16:57

Call 911. Call 911. Call 911.

17:00

Call 911.

17:01

Call 911. Call 911. You really know what

17:04

I'm talking to you about? What's going on? Is that Kimberly?

17:06

Why is she back? What's happening? And

17:09

she walks into the bathroom and she has this beautiful

17:11

red hair and she pulls

17:13

off her wig. This is very

17:15

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

17:18

has a shaved head and a

17:20

huge, extremely dramatic scar

17:22

on the side.

17:26

I was at a party with other people and people just

17:28

like. Screamed with delight.

17:31

Like you know, we laugh but we gasped.

17:34

I mean it was, which is the kind

17:36

of, the laughing and gasping at the same

17:38

time is exactly the reaction

17:41

that makes a prime time soap a hit.

17:45

One thing Melrose was not, however,

17:47

was especially political. The closest

17:50

they got to any kind of political statement

17:52

was a character named Matt, who was gay

17:55

and out of the closet and not

17:57

much else. Is that gay? Yeah,

18:00

what about it? I don't think I die.

18:02

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

18:04

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

18:07

the gay character who rarely has a boyfriend

18:09

and barely has a personality, is

18:12

a perfect summation of the show's point

18:14

of view. Just daring enough

18:16

to get attention, but not enough to actually

18:18

risk turning off viewers.

18:21

So Melrose was not only a gargantuan

18:23

rating success overseen by a powerful

18:25

name brand producer, it was politically

18:28

pretty timid. And the gala committee's

18:30

whole project was explicitly, if slyly,

18:33

political. But the committee

18:35

was undeterred, as in any good heist

18:38

they just needed an inside man. Or,

18:41

as it turned out, an inside woman. We

18:44

were watching Melrose Place and we noticed in

18:46

the credits the name Deborah Segal came

18:49

up as the set decorator. John LaPointe,

18:51

one of the earliest members of the gala committee,

18:53

again. We grabbed the phone book and

18:56

lo and behold Deborah Segal was listed. So

18:59

we called Deborah Segal.

19:01

He called me a few times

19:03

and I ignored him.

19:05

Deborah Segal now goes by Deborah

19:07

Segal Constantino. We connected

19:09

on a spotty telephone line to talk about

19:11

her time at Melrose. She told

19:14

me that when she finally stopped ignoring Melchin's

19:16

calls, it turned out the project's politics,

19:19

its interest in product placement and virality

19:21

were right up her alley. Can

19:24

you tell me about that?

19:25

Well, I was very leftist active

19:28

person. I felt that

19:31

Melrose Place was not

19:34

in line with my belief.

19:36

And so instead of saying no to this wacky

19:38

project, she said, free art and

19:41

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

19:43

interesting and its left wing, bring

19:46

it. Alright, this just got a little weird and

19:48

real. It was like, oh shit, this

19:50

is bad.

20:00

With the project to go, things had to move

20:03

from theoretical to actual very

20:05

fast. The committee began to get

20:07

grants and started bringing in outside

20:10

artists to contribute.

20:11

I was sitting in

20:13

my home office

20:16

and the phone

20:17

rang. Constance Penley is

20:19

an artist and media theorist who currently

20:21

teaches at UC Santa Barbara.

20:23

Thirty seconds into telling

20:26

me about the project, I

20:29

said, I get it, I'm in.

20:31

They

20:31

would contact many artists

20:34

this way and so the gala

20:36

committee swelled. From a dozen students

20:38

to over a hundred participants, people

20:40

joined from other states too. They

20:42

would eventually draw a map of the United States

20:45

with the gala committee's activities on it that

20:47

looks like a swirl of arrows chasing

20:50

each other around the country. We would just start

20:52

brainstorming

20:54

and sending sketches

20:57

to gala members at

20:59

the University of Georgia where Mel was. Get

21:02

notes back from them and brainstorm

21:05

a piece. Because so few of them

21:07

have email, all of this happened over

21:09

fax machine. And then maybe

21:12

it would go off to Grand Arts

21:15

in Kansas City to be fabricated

21:18

and then get sent back,

21:21

you know, to

21:22

CalArts. CalArts happened to be

21:24

right next to where Melrose Place was shot.

21:27

During

21:30

this period, they designed some of the pieces we

21:32

mentioned earlier. The float for Melrose's

21:34

pool that looked like a sperm about to fertilize

21:36

an egg. The viral clock. They

21:39

also designed and fabricated a piece called

21:41

Safety Sheets created by students in

21:43

the textile department at the University of Georgia.

21:46

You can see it in multiple episodes

21:48

of the show, but it's especially noticeable

21:51

in an episode called Run, Billy,

21:53

Run.

21:53

Please.

21:59

Favorite time. Any

22:02

morning but this one. During

22:04

this episode, Lothario Dr. Peter

22:07

Barnes and his current lover wake up

22:09

in his apartment. And if you

22:11

know what you're looking for, you can

22:13

see that the pattern on his sheets is

22:16

unrolled condoms. At

22:18

the time, the FCC wouldn't allow unrolled

22:21

condoms to be shown on air. John

22:23

LaPointe again. That was the moon landing

22:26

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

22:28

my God, it's actually happening.

22:32

Safety sheets was important because until

22:35

then, it wasn't totally clear to the gala

22:37

committee what was happening. They

22:39

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

22:42

or if they would be used until they

22:44

saw them show up on television. And we

22:46

would gather in a bar and had a pizza joint

22:48

and we watched the show. It largely

22:50

was hit or miss. Actually, it largely was missed

22:53

because you never quite knew, you

22:55

know, what would end up on the cutting room floor. And

22:57

lots of pieces did. Even the

22:59

ones that made it onto TV like the viral

23:02

clock and the sperm pool float were pretty

23:04

hard to see. But several months

23:06

into the project, this haphazard relationship

23:08

got more serious. It was thanks

23:11

to a piece called Total Proof.

23:13

Now, I want to go all out on this. Radio

23:15

and print ads, the best coverage and quality.

23:18

D&D is going to make sure that this is the most successful

23:20

new club this year.

23:21

D&D was cutthroat,

23:23

fictional advertising firm many characters

23:26

on Melrose Place worked for. The

23:28

Gallant committee often designed posters

23:30

that represented D&D's work. Total

23:33

Proof was one of these posters and it was a parody

23:35

of Absolute Vodka's ubiquitous 1990s

23:38

print ad campaign. So you

23:41

may remember these. They all show a bottle

23:43

of Absolute Vodka, but with some variation

23:45

to it that was then reflected in the ads

23:48

text, like a bottle would be drawn

23:50

by Keith Haring and say Absolute

23:52

Haring underneath it. Or it would have

23:54

a halo over it with the slogan Absolute

23:56

Perfection. The Gallant committee's

23:59

version Well, it was an

24:01

aerial photograph of the wreckage of the Oklahoma

24:04

City bombing, which at that point was

24:06

the largest and deadliest terrorist attack

24:08

on U.S. soil. And it had happened

24:10

less than a year earlier. The

24:13

committee took that photograph and

24:15

photoshopped it to be in the shape of a liquor

24:17

bottle with the slogan, Total

24:19

Proof, underneath it. This was these

24:21

stealth culture jamming we're hacking, basically,

24:24

at this point. And, like, tihi-hi,

24:26

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

24:28

was the gala committee at its cultured jammiest,

24:31

a provocative spit-take on a popular

24:34

ad campaign highlighting how capitalism

24:36

can commodify anything. But

24:39

unlike the other gala committee work to this

24:41

point, Total Proof did not go

24:44

unnoticed by the powers that be at

24:46

Melrose Place.

24:56

Apple Card is the credit card created by

24:58

Apple. You earn 3% daily cash

25:00

back upfront when you use it to buy a new

25:03

iPhone 15, AirPods, or any

25:05

products at Apple. And you can automatically

25:07

grow your daily cash at 4.15% annual percentage

25:10

yield when you

25:12

open a high-yield savings account.

25:14

Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app

25:16

on iPhone. Apple Card is subject

25:18

to credit approval. Savings

25:20

is available to Apple Card owners subject

25:22

to eligibility. Savings accounts

25:24

by Goldman Sachs Bank USA

25:27

member FDIC. Terms

25:29

apply.

25:31

Total Proof, the vodka ad with the

25:33

Oklahoma City bombing on it, made its

25:35

way onto set for the shooting of Season

25:38

4's 26th episode called Triumph

25:41

of the Bill. Before filming

25:43

began for the day, a crew member noticed

25:45

it. The

25:46

line producer at the time had

25:49

seen it and

25:51

objected and took it down. Mike

25:53

South was a writer and executive producer on

25:55

Melrose Place. This

26:00

is why I did it and shoot,

26:03

I was really enthusiastic. It

26:05

turns out that prior to being a writer

26:07

for television, Frank South was actually

26:10

a performance artist who himself

26:12

had been part of a collective running

26:14

a gallery and performance space in downtown

26:16

New York. When Deborah

26:18

told him about the project, not only was

26:21

he down to let the Total Proof poster appear

26:23

on air, he was down to meet with Mel

26:25

Chin. They had lunch, hit

26:27

it off, and Frank decided to loop

26:29

the gala committee into the production process

26:32

of the show, though not his

26:34

boss, the show's mastermind, Aaron

26:37

Spelling. I always intended to tell Aaron

26:39

about it,

26:40

you know, what I was doing, but at one point,

26:43

I decided not to, because it was getting so integral.

26:47

You know, I just like that old thing. You

26:49

know, apologize, don't ask permission. Everything

26:55

immediately got more collaborative. Melrose

26:58

Place's production team became so intertwined

27:01

with the project that they would eventually be added

27:03

to the official list of gala committee members.

27:06

The project also got more daring, pointed,

27:09

and ambitious. The artists knew

27:11

their work would air and they could help implement

27:14

onsite installations. So,

27:16

for example, the committee went to the set

27:19

of shooters, the bar where the characters

27:21

drink, and replaced all the labels

27:23

on the alcohol bottles with text relating

27:26

the history of agribusiness, alcohol,

27:28

and slavery in America. They

27:30

designed an ad campaign for the character Billy

27:33

called Family Values that featured

27:35

silhouettes of same-sex couples with children.

27:38

Building off of the success of Safety Sheets,

27:40

they created that quilt we talked about earlier,

27:42

the one with the chemical formula for the abortion

27:45

pill printed on it at a time when reproductive

27:47

choice was rarely discussed on TV.

27:50

Gala committee member Constance Penley. For

27:53

two entire

27:54

episodes, we had Allison,

27:56

who was confined to her home with

27:59

a difficult period. pregnancy just

28:01

be draped in this

28:03

beautiful quilt. No arguments.

28:07

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

28:10

else is secondary. None of the doctors are,

28:12

not mine. You're right.

28:15

I know. So that was our

28:17

way to

28:18

be able to get speech about reproductive choice

28:20

back onto

28:24

network television.

28:26

One of their most audacious pieces, food

28:29

for thought hid in the most unlikely and ubiquitous

28:33

of places. And what about the Chinese

28:35

takeout bags? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because

28:38

knowing of the reruns and its

28:41

worldwide syndication and distribution, it

28:44

did not have to be limited

28:46

to English speaking language. And

28:49

so they wrote provocative phrases in

28:51

Mandarin on takeout containers. On

28:54

one, they put the Chinese character for turmoil

28:57

that had been used to describe the Tiananmen square

28:59

protests next to the character for

29:01

human rights. On another, they

29:03

wrote stolen artifacts, national

29:06

treasure, a reference to colonial looting.

29:08

You know, a billion people could read Chinese. The

29:11

idea was having that power to,

29:14

to speak to someone just

29:16

through a casual viewing of a show and

29:18

say, wait a minute. I read Chinese

29:20

and that's a message that is not

29:23

even allowed.

29:28

Eventually, the committee was even asked

29:30

to help flesh out the character of Samantha,

29:33

who's an artist on Melrose Place. Ah,

29:36

it's the painting I gave Craig. You

29:39

steal it, did you? Of

29:42

course not.

29:44

15 of the women who worked on the gala committee

29:48

were flown to grand arts in Kansas

29:50

City to be able to brainstorm

29:54

this new character, but also

29:57

to create

29:57

her artwork.

29:59

Samantha's brightly

30:02

colored art, which was created by gala

30:04

committee members, referenced the sunny

30:06

pools and California landscapes of

30:08

David Hockney, but also contained

30:11

a hidden darkness, the ghostly

30:14

echo of the tragic histories of Los

30:16

Angeles.

30:17

We made our locations be places

30:19

where horrific violence

30:22

had occurred. You

30:23

know, locations where the Manson

30:26

murders occurred, the

30:28

Ambassador Hotel where Robert F. Kennedy

30:30

was assassinated.

30:32

Together, the production staff and

30:34

the gala committee had created dozens

30:36

of covert works of art and hidden

30:38

them in plain sight. Other popular

30:41

primetime entertainment wasn't showing unrolled

30:43

condoms on television or nodding

30:45

at abortion or alluding to the legacy

30:47

of slavery, but a group of scrappy

30:50

artists and a pop cultural phenomenon

30:52

did and reached an audience

30:55

of millions and millions of

30:57

people.

30:58

The only wrinkle was no

31:01

one watching seems to have

31:03

really seen it. After

31:11

placing over a hundred pieces of art on

31:13

Melrose Place over the course of three

31:15

seasons, it finally came time

31:17

for the gala committee to show the world what

31:19

they had been up to. In March

31:21

of 1997, In the Name of the Place opened as part

31:25

of the Museum of Contemporary Art's uncommon

31:28

sense exhibit. They weren't the only

31:30

ones with wild ideas about how to rethink

31:33

the museum show. Karen Finley had

31:36

live nude drawing classes

31:39

going on and Carlson and Mary Ellen

31:41

Strom had a rodeo with a

31:43

live horse in the middle of the

31:46

galleries. Tom Finkelpearl

31:48

is one of the curators of uncommon sense.

31:51

There was a project that included 1.1

31:53

million pounds of

31:55

crushed glass that was installed

31:58

by the sanitation department of LA. The

32:00

museum even let the gala committee

32:03

recreate Shooter's Bar and allowed

32:05

patrons to drink at it.

32:09

Before the show opened at Mocha, the gala

32:11

committee and the staff at Melrose had one

32:13

last hurrah, filming a

32:15

pivotal scene of an episode of Melrose within

32:18

the exhibit of objects that had been

32:20

previously seen on the television

32:22

show. Sorry if I stranded you. No,

32:25

no problem. I'll be taking this exhibit.

32:27

It has some phenomenal pieces. Mel

32:30

is actually in this scene. He's lurking

32:33

in the background, walking through the exhibit

32:35

with Deborah Siegel-Constantino. What

32:37

do you think it means?

32:40

I think it's about a man's journey through war, memory.

32:45

There was a fake director, there was

32:47

a fake museum communications

32:50

officer. There was

32:52

art that wasn't art, but

32:54

it was art. Julie Lazar, co-curator

32:57

of Uncommon Sense, loved that Melrose

32:59

placed films at the museum. It raised

33:02

all the central questions of the exhibit

33:04

itself.

33:05

I thought it was fantastic because it parallels

33:09

was the work that was on the screen

33:11

and set behind the actors' art.

33:14

When was it art? Was it on the

33:17

television show or was it when they came to the gallery

33:19

and it was hanging behind

33:21

them?

33:22

Clearly the gallerists, the gala

33:25

committee, and the Melrose production team were

33:27

having fun. But once Uncommon

33:29

Sense was open to the public, not

33:31

everyone was amused. The show got like

33:34

exceedingly bad reviews.

33:36

Actually, there's words that are

33:39

just burned into my consciousness.

33:42

Those words come from the New York Times's Roberta

33:45

Smith, in a review that was titled

33:47

A Lot to See, but Not an Artwork

33:49

in Sight. She said of gala's

33:52

work that it has the raw, discombobulated

33:55

feeling of a group show of young,

33:57

undeveloped artists. said

34:00

in that review also, which is also sort of true,

34:03

is that it seems like the most

34:05

profound and interesting or something like that experience

34:08

happened before the show opened. Asking

34:10

questions about art's purpose and methods of

34:12

creation doesn't always result in

34:14

work that people enjoy. Or

34:17

even notice. Did you happen to notice

34:20

that with some regularity, Melrose

34:23

used very, very odd

34:26

props and set pieces that

34:28

had actually been designed by an

34:31

experimental art collective? I

34:33

would love to claim that I did notice

34:35

that because it's a fascinating,

34:38

completely bizarre piece of

34:41

Melrose plays history, but no. The answer

34:43

to that question is no. I had

34:46

no awareness of this whatsoever.

34:49

In fact, almost anyone who heard

34:52

about the experiment only learned about

34:54

it after the fact. In the art reviews

34:56

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

34:59

this was even true when it came to

35:01

the head honcho of Melrose plays. Frank

35:04

South, the producer and writer who embraced the

35:06

project, was at the office early one morning

35:09

when Aaron Spelling summoned him. When

35:11

did you know this was going on?

35:21

Spelling

35:22

wasn't known for bursts

35:25

of rage, but Frank could see

35:28

he wasn't happy.

35:31

He

35:47

said, I don't want anything that

35:49

would ever harm this show.

35:59

One of the things he said is, who pays for all this

36:02

shit?

36:02

Where does it all come from? Who spanks? Are

36:05

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

36:07

it's no. It's a

36:09

money-saving operation.

36:11

It's for free.

36:13

And that mollified

36:16

him a little.

36:19

I asked the people I spoke to about

36:21

the work's initial invisibility.

36:24

And at the time, were they hoping people

36:26

might notice?

36:27

Of course. Sure.

36:29

They're not real. But this is commonplace

36:31

with art. Some of it connects with the public,

36:34

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

36:36

don't usually get it in front of an audience

36:38

of 15 million people to begin with. In

36:41

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

36:45

years later, Melrose Place went off

36:47

the air. It seemed that, like a

36:49

lot of interesting art projects, in the name

36:51

of the place was destined to be forgotten by

36:54

everyone other than the Galla Committee. But

36:57

then, one of the committee's original

36:59

inspirations turned out to be more

37:01

apt than they could have anticipated. It's

37:04

about patients like a virus entering

37:08

your world. It takes time for

37:10

it to just take. The project

37:12

gradually took on a new life. Not

37:15

on TV, not to millions of people,

37:18

but a new life nonetheless. In 1998,

37:21

the objects from in the name of the place were auctioned

37:24

off by Sotheby's, with the proceeds going

37:26

to charity. The project was exhibited

37:28

in Korea and Kansas City and New

37:30

Orleans. In the

37:32

fall of 2016, Red

37:34

Bull Gallery in New York, itself an experimenter-branded,

37:37

branded content by an energy drink, remounted

37:40

in the name of the place, and this time, the

37:43

reviews were good. For

37:45

John Lapointe, this kind of baton passing

37:47

is immensely gratifying. I mean, that's

37:50

the whole tradition of art, is just passing

37:52

on as a conversation. It's constantly built upon itself.

38:00

less purchased than ever before, but

38:02

in the name of the place, is still

38:04

replicating. It didn't go viral

38:07

in the sense of finding immediate widespread popularity,

38:10

but it wound up being viral in

38:12

the sense of slowly reaching more

38:14

and more hosts and spreading itself

38:17

throughout the ecosystem. First

38:20

it lived in the minds of artists, and then

38:22

it jumped to the people making a TV show,

38:24

and then to articles in magazines and newspapers,

38:27

and then to museums around the world, and

38:30

then most of all to the internet, where

38:32

Melrose Place and all the work it contained

38:35

is just a few clicks away. Now

38:38

it has infected its latest host, this

38:41

show, and it continues to spread

38:44

to you. Go take

38:46

a look for yourself, and then,

38:49

you know, pass it on.

38:51

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

38:54

like, like you emailed me the other

38:56

day, like, okay, here we go again.

39:08

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Isaac

39:10

Butler.

39:11

And I'm Willip Haskin. If you have any cultural

39:13

mysteries you want us to decode, please email us

39:16

at DecoderRing at Slate.com.

39:19

This episode was written and

39:20

reported by Isaac Butler. Decoder

39:22

Ring is produced by Willip Haskin and Katie

39:24

Shepard. This episode was produced by

39:27

Benjamin Frisch. Derek John is

39:29

executive producer. Joe Meyer is senior

39:31

editor-producer. Merrick Jacob is senior technical

39:34

director. We'd like to thank Jamie

39:36

Bennett and also JJ Bursch for educating

39:39

Isaac on product placement, Mark Flood

39:41

for sharing his memories of the gala committee,

39:43

and to shout out Cynthia Carr's book, On

39:46

Edge, performance at the end of the 20th

39:48

century, which is where Isaac first heard

39:50

about all of this. If you want to see some

39:53

of the artwork from In the Name of the Place,

39:55

we'll include a link in our show notes.

39:57

And please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

39:59

our feed, do never miss an episode.

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Even better, leave a review and rating

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you next time.

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