1993 called, it wants you to call it back on this pay phone.
The New Museum has launched an exhibit on 1993. This is depressing for those of us who were fully adults then, but should be fun for people filled with innocent and childish wonder what that time was all about. In order to promote the exhibit, the ad agency Droga5 has come up with a pretty cool idea: You can call the number 1-855-FOR-1993 from any of the 5,000 sad, forlorn, nearly useless phones in the city, and you can talk to the past.
Well, you can’t talk to the past directly (“hi Sarah, buy Google stock”), but you will be treated to a recorded history lesson from people who were important at that time — like Mario Batali, apparently — and they will tell you all about what it was like to live in New York City when people like Lady Miss Kier lived there and there were only a few hedge funds instead of like 7,000 billion of them. A time back when pay phones were useful for something besides interactive exhibits.
The exhibition is named “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star” after the Sonic Youth album that people who need to learn about this time have never heard of, and runs until May 23.
