The James Franco clone that has taken on professor duties has officially been powered up. While other Francos will continue studying at colleges and acting and being an artist and attending to a fairly frequent Francodefiling habit, the professor will be molding young minds at both NYU and PS 1. So how do you get in on the action? You most likely don't. more ›

When it was announced that James Franco would be returning to reprise his role as Robert "Franco" Frank on General Hospital, filming weeks of scenes in just a few days, we raised the possibility of an army of James Franco clones. Now it turns out that this clone army may be a dream deferred, because Franco says he won't be heading to Port Charles after all. more ›

Yesterday P.S. 1 unveiled this year's Young Architects Program courtyard installation. The big design project serves as party central for the popular Warm Up music series, which kicks off July 3rd and marks the official start of summer for the North American Pale Skinned Hipster. 2010's winner is "Pole Dance," a "participatory environment that reframes the conceptual relationship between humankind and structure." In other words, there are giant balls for you to swat and bendy poles that make musical tones when you shake them. Like a giant cat toy, but for stoned humans. more ›

This Thursday the Greater New York exhibit opens at PS 1 in Long Island City (and will run through October 18th). This is their third time around with the exhibit, which this year will showcase 68 artists—covering all mediums—who live and work in the city. A few of the artists have also been commissioned to work in residence, shooting photographs and video, rehearsing and realizing performances, and "stretching the notions of sculpture, painting, photography, film, and video-making." It's like performance art art, or something. more ›

Over the weekend, P.S.1 in Long Island City housed Brooklyn Is Burning, an event curated by Sarvia Jasso and Andres Bedoya that promotes and embraces artistic expression. So certainly the museum that welcomed such an event into their space would also embrace all forms of art... right? Well, it seems even P.S.1 has its limits. more ›

Last summer the courtyard at P.S. 1 in Long Island City was transformed into a woolly village suggesting something out of Planet of the Apes (particularly when packed with ragged, glassy-eyed hipsters). The summer before that, it was urban farming. Today P.S.1 announced this year's winner of the Young Architects Program, which is regarded in the architecture world as a "kingmaker" of sorts; previous winners include SHoP, which was brought in to revamp the Barclays Center after Frank Gehry left the building. This time it's the Brooklyn firm SO-IL, and their winning entry is entitled "Pole Dance." Scenesters fond of P.S. 1's Warm Up parties will be quite stoked to learn that this Pole Dance is interactive. more ›

Not us—see it below in all its NSFW, uh, glory. The "it" we're talking about here, be warned, is artist Jonathan Horowitz's 2008 piece "CBS Evening News/www.Britneycrotch.org," which frames two big digital prints on top of each other: The top image is Katie Couric at her news desk, and the bottom is Britney Spears’s infamous crotch shot, photoshopped to match Couric's upper half. It's the artistic antithesis of a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, and you can see it at P.S. 1 in Queens with your own eyes (though the museum politely asks that visitors not flush their gouged-out their eyes down the toilet). more ›

With monsoon season seemingly on the wane, it's high time we welcomed P.S. 1's annual summertime Young Architects Program, wherein the Long Island City museum invites a design team to transform their giant courtyard into... whatever. This year's project, by the firm MOS, is drolly dubbed Afterparty, a sly nod to P.S. 1's popular afternoon "Warm-Up" music series. more ›

PS 1 announced the winners of their annual contest that allows amateur architects the opportunity to transform the entrance to the Long Island City museum throughout their summer of weekly dance parties held in its courtyard. Winners Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith's of Brooklyn almost didn't make it down to the judging Monday because their proposal, called "afterparty," wouldn't even fit in their car. The title of the piece seemed appropriate because MoMA architecture curator Barry Bergdoll says all entries responded to the current climate with the thinking of, "How do we still create a fun party space when clearly the economic party is over?” The Times says that the winning piece, finished in the wee hours of of Sunday night, was created by a team that describes themselves as “a collective of designers, architects, thinkers and state-of-the-art weirdos.” Last year an urban farm sprung up at the space. more ›

Seen here is the awesomeness of P.F. 1, the sustainable urban garden project now in its final days at the P.S. 1 art center in Queens. The project comes from the imaginations of Amale Andraos and Dan Wood. P.F. 1, winners of MoMA’s Young Architects Program, and is described in amazing detail on its website and this Times article. In a nutshell, however, P.S. 1 is a miniature farm constructed completely from recyclable materials: chiefly 260 gargantuan paper towel-esque industrial tubes. Andraos and Wood conjoined and converted them into working planters, building the tubes out to form a wavy plane that swoops up over a P.S. 1 wall brimming with things like beets, kale, and dill. Now at the end of the season, the plants are still growing, seemingly creeping off toward the sides of One Court Square just down the block, Day of the Triffids style. Also integral to P.F. 1’s design are rainwater collection and solar power systems, a tiny kiddie pool, and four chickens. more ›

Last year the Complaint Choir voiced their grievances in Chicago, and yesterday it was New York's turn. Complaints Choir, an internationally acclaimed community art project, was organized by The New Wilderness Foundation in collaboration with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center and the New York-based Finnish Cultural Institute. Meeting at 4 p.m. yesterday afternoon at Mehanata Bulgarian Bar, those in attendance had the project explained to them, as videos were shown, and lyrics were created. From the press release:

Participants write down their gripes ­ whether they reflect life's tiny inconveniences, personal angst or cosmic conundrums and together edit their list into a set of lyrics, usually breaking into expert groups focusing on particular subjects. The composer (Alan Licht, whose work combines elements of pop, free jazz and minimalism) then turns those lyrics into a song, with the instruction that it be upbeat, if not downright anthemic. After sufficient rehearsal, the choir performs publicly.

Last year a farm floated into the city on a barge and this coming summer a farm will sprout at PS1, but will a sustainable urban farm ever take root in New York for good? more ›