My Visit to Chicago's MCA

My Visit to Chicago’s MCA

My Visit to Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art

A couple weeks ago I went on a trip to Chicago. After an exhausting flight sitting next a disgusting tub of lard whose seat could barely contain him, I finally arrived in the windy city as it’s called.

While Meghan was at work I was left alone in her apartment, my only company being a rescued semi-retarded house cat Rex and my porn-laden lap top. My boredom eventually got the best of me and I decided to do a little exploring.

Meghan’s apartment is right in the middle of down town Chicago, only walking distance from Navy Pier.  I asked a passing pedestrian if there were any museums in the area.

“Oh yea! There’s a really great one called the MCA just a few blocks from here!”

“Really…. What does MCA stand for?”

“The Museum of Contemporary Art!”

…Contemporary Art. The phrase did not sit well with me. But I was compelled to press on, and a few blocks later the building came into view.

Anyone visiting the museum is greeted by a Yugo held end-up by a much heavier trailer, which is cut at the rear corner and buried with debris similar to that of the sidewalk, so as to give the impression that the trailer is smashed into the street.

Gay. But what do I know? I’m far to plebian for something as meaningful as that.

At least the museum was free as I was told, and I climbed the steps to its entrance. Immediately the museum was an enigma, as there was no initial display.  To access any galleries I had to climb four more flights of steps up a winding staircase hidden from the museum’s few patrons in a corner by the coat check in. Once there I was in no mood for what was to come.

The first exhibit was of “architecture of the future”, and centered on a building designed to use “zero energy”. To be built entirely of glass and salvaged steel, the building appeared at initial inspection to be pretty impressive. That impression would be fleeting.

One of the building’s most trumpeted features was a massive, extremely low-friction wind turbine actually built into the building’s facade designed to supposedly harness Chicago’s powerful winds. The artists, and I mean artists, as no engineer would green light such an obscene expenditure, left out what the production of such a sophisticated piece of technology would entail.

How many years would it take for that extravagant contraption to pay for itself in electricity savings? How can these artists whose main ideological drive behind this project was “the conservation of our Planet’s dwindling natural resources” expend even more of these “dwindling resources” on the production, testing, transportation, installation, and maintanence of this monstrosity? How long before the whole thing is shut down by the environmentalist cartel when the first gutter rat pigeon gets sucked in?

And that’s not all, the company financing this building hails from Guangdong, China.  Clearly portrayed in this exhibit as a model for progressive companies everywhere. China is not exactly a “progressive” nation, as this picture of an unwashed, very mature female fetus left to rot in a gutter in plain view kindly reminds us:

 Oh yea. These pictures were taken in 2001.

Finished with the architecture of the future, I moved on. The next display was of a digital marquis, where the artist’s personal beliefs condensed into short phrases flashed by. I was visually assaulted with phrase after phrase of arrogance and assumption:

“When you say I love you mean it.”

“Never underestimate your ability to create change.”

“Death is a continuation of life.”

“Speak kindly of others.”

“Mind your own business.”

Yea. Take a hint, asshole.

I turned around at the third display, which was of drawings of the “amorphous, genderless culture of the future”.

Listening to my CD of Russian rock from the movie “Brother”,  I got started on the mile walk back to the apartment. It was raining.