Critical Halloween: Luxury

 

Saturday, October 29, 2016

9 pm – 2 am

 

United Palace

4140 Broadway, New York

Critical Halloween is a party, an intellectual debate, a costume competition, and a space for the expression of radical thought. Over the past few years, it has become a referential event that brings people together through music, dance, and costume to engage in critical discussion in New York City.

 

Each year, Critical Halloween celebrates a feared ghost of art and architectural production. This year, we explore LUXURY.

 

Luxury is a chameleonic and shifting term. We use it to describe that which we desire; we all want to have the luxury of time, and some of us want to see it pass by on a luxury watch.

 

Derived from the Latin “luxus” (excess), the term carries fluctuating pejorative and covetous connotations. The modern confluence of excess and excellence conflicts with a world that also aspires to fairness and equality.

 

The appropriation of luxury as a marketing tool has penetrated contemporary life, and luxury itself is too often entangled in capitalistic and financial exuberance. Constantly bombarded by media campaigns, our individual and collective vectors of desire are constantly realigned with the products, services, and goods being marketed and sold to us. However, luxury cars, luxury goods, and luxury homes may in fact have little to do with luxury itself, and with the values behind our real aspirations.

 

Our decisions are often driven by the opinions and power of tastemakers and experts. This year, we are looking for new connoisseurs. Critical Halloween invites you to denounce obsolete definitions of luxury in art, architecture, and design, and to redefine its possibilities in shaping the future.

 

Critical Halloween is a space of reflection and action based upon the belief that critical ideas have a place within even the most seemingly carefree manifestations of our culture: the Halloween costume party.

 

COSTUME COMPETITION WINNERS

 

Read the Party Bibliography HERE.

 

 

For more Photographs, check our Flickr album:

 

 

 

PARTY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Need some inspiration for your costume? Check out our Party Bibliography HERE.

 

COSTUME COMPETITION PRIZES

This year the LUXURY jury will announce the awards at midnight. The jury will award prizes in the following categories: Best Overall Costume, Best Individual Costume, Best Duo/Couple Costume, and Best Group Costume. 

 

LUXURY JURY

Sherry Dobbin, Director of Public Art, Times Square Arts
Eva Franch, Chief Curator and Executive Director, Storefront for Art and Architecture
Amit Khurana, Founding Partner, Sumaida + Khurana
Curtis Kulig, Artist
Benjamin Prosky, Executive Director, AIANY & Center for Architecture
Charles Renfro, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Anja Rubik, Editor in Chief, 25 Magazine