A claw machine with a living hand, a fish-human hybrid, and a shrunken room dominated by a larger-than-life telephone. This year’s Dada Prom at Public Space One, or PS1, felt like falling down a rabbit hole into a world where absurdity took center stage and reality was left holding its coat at the door.
Dada Prom is a yearly fundraiser that kicks off the return of the Surreal House Installation while giving community members an opportunity to support PS1’s year-round programming and resources. As an artist-led, community-driven art center that prides itself on providing inclusive and diverse installations, the fundraiser is a major part of the cohort’s programming each year.
Conceptualized by artist Kelly Moore, The Surreal House Installation is an annual event. While it’s open, artists across the community come together to transform PS1’s Close House into an immersive art exhibit, weaving together various themed rooms that each offer new peculiarities to explore.
The “Wallflowers” room, decorated by the Big Brunch Energy group, transported guests into a world of uneasy elegance. Flowers and leaves sprouted like rebellious weeds throughout the room, tables were garnished with handmade butterflies snuggled next to grenades, and horror-masked creatures in prom attire pressed up against walls and hung down from the ceiling.
A retro-future fever dream awaited in one room, brought to life by Sara Montgomery.
“Every decade has a view on what the future looks like, so we took inspiration from that,” Amanda Mosley, a contributor who helped actualize the vision, said.
The immersive exhibit featured TVs crafted out of Styrofoam coolers housing miniature dioramas depicting nonsensically futuristic scenes.
“We’re all thrifty humans. A lot of things were found objects. We’re really good at finding this for free,” Mosley said.
This absurdist reflection on nostalgia was encapsulated by the room’s pièce de résistance — a human claw machine. Here, for one Dada dollar, the currency of the night, participants could retrieve prizes by pulling on strings to direct a silver-painted hand attached to a living person hidden behind a blacked-out mask.
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The night whimsically wound to an end with a costume contest, celebrating one of the most anticipated aspects of the event: the invitation for guests to step into the theme by donning surreal or absurd outfits of their own creation.
“Our first year, we weren’t sure how seriously people would take dressing up,” Program Director Kalmia Strong said. “But when we opened the door, there was just a line of people in amazing costumes.”
Among the winners was “a tea party” — an outfit featuring a table framed around the wearer’s hips. The intricately detailed assembly was adorned with teacups, serving platters, and biscuits. Another standout was a person dressed as “unrealistic beauty standards,” bedizened with oversized lips scattered across her body.
Although this costumed parade of absurdity marched the night to its conclusion, the Surreal House will remain open throughout December, ready for visitors to step inside its world of nonsense and experience how the mundane can be transformed into the magical.
“We are excited to be as accessible as possible,” Strong said. “For people who like to dance and be at a party, we have this soirée tonight. But [for those who don’t,] we make the installation available for people to see all throughout the month of December.”