Brats, Poppers, and Art Pop: Charli xcx Spends a Day at Storm King

The title of Charli xcx’s Brat remix album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, applies neatly to the pop-up listening party she hosted Thursday at Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. It was Charli—literally, her, dancing for a few hundred fans beneath the sun, flanked by colossal sculptures—where we’d never seen her before.

Brat, both the album and the concept behind it, is—if you somehow missed it—an attitude and a setting. The attitude being ‘okay? (¬_¬)’ and the locale being an alcohol-slicked hedonistic hangout, or more recently, Madison Square Garden. Storm King, however, is none of those things. The 64-year-old 500-acre outdoor museum in the Hudson Valley is the steward of a world-class sculpture collection, with works by Richard Serra, Alexander Calder, Maya Lin, and Louise Bourgeois, and other titans of the medium. Typically, it provides an undulating sea of green, hushed save the birds, except this past Thursday from 3:30 p.m., when the attendees arrived, to about 5:30 p.m., when the iconoclast wrapped her one hour(ish) DJ set. The club, we know, is a moveable feast, whether its lights strobe or descend from the sky.

“I wasn’t sure what the vibe was going to be,” Charli said into a microphone after climbing atop the DJ booth. Nestled in the crook of a tall, two-sided installation wrapped in green vinyl and stamped with the brat track names, the structure had the magnetism of Kubrick’s monolith, drawing staff and guests alike to its feet.

I can’t comment on the rear of the crowd, but near the ad-hoc stage, the scents of oak and maple ceded to a more pungent flower, while fingers dipped into plastic bags and poppers did as they do. With a twist of Charli’s aux, the “360” remix blasted from the bass. The crowd screamed. “Not hyped enough,” the star screamed back. 

The Storm King team is still tallying the final headcount, but they said that as of this morning, more than 200 RSVP-holders attended with plus ones, and that’s not including staff and vendors. Capacity, the organizers also confirmed, was capped at 1,000. Word on the day was that some 26,000 hopeful fans who RSVP’d to the event failed to make the cut. In defense of the (theoretical) 25,000 losers, it was a merciless rollout. The show was teased for the first time in a TikTok on Monday. On Tuesday, Charli posted a link to the registration on her Instagram story (for context, she has 6.4 million followers on the social media platform). Despite the short notice, the brats boarded the 12:30 p.m. Metro-North train out of Grand Central—informally dubbed the bratmobile—to the confusion of commuters. One woman, who out of all 365 calendar days chose October 10 to wear a bright green sweater, said she and her companion didn’t even know Charli xcx was playing in New Windsor. 

“Our biggest concern was why is [the train] so goddamn crowded,” the man said. 

The fans disembarked soon after at Beacon. There was a long beat, before the crowd was shepherded by Storm King staff into shuttle buses, where they milled about the station and sidewalk, incongruous in their festival attire with the crisp midafternoon. Black leather matched black sunglasses (both of which stayed on); glitter glinted below eyes and along the brows; some guys wore jeans, some wore skirts, and one wore a minion outfit because, ‘why not?’

Incredibly, John Stern, the president and CEO of Storm King, told ARTnews that the event came together in just “a few weeks.” Stern said Charli’s people reached out first about a collaboration between the museum and the live streaming platform Twitch. Apparently, the Cambridge, UK-native “loves” Storm King; “I had no idea,” he added. Storm King has hosted classical music performances in the past, but Stern said his team hopes more pop-art crossovers are ahead.

Press did not have an opportunity to speak with the singer on Thursday, and she dove into a stalling car after the last song ended, anyway. At least one artist was around to chat. 

“Everybody had been hounding me, they thought I had access to tickets,” Arlene Shechet said. “I wish I did! My studio and gallery people were like ahh,” she added, miming an expression of longing. The sculptor has a studio an hour away in Woodstock, but stopped by Storm King since her solo exhibition, “Girl Group”,  is currently on view through November 10. (Art in America featured Shechet’s show in its May 2024 “Icons” issue.)

The six large-scale works, variably made of steel, wood, paper, and ceramic, were a welcome pop of color, as the institution’s permanent collection, save a few red Calders, favors unadorned steel, stone, and aluminum. They seemed of a spirit with the odd sight of lime treading lines in the yellow-green grass.

“Storm King is amazing, and look at this day,” Shechet said, gesturing at the blue sky, changing leaves, and people, two pairs of whom said it was their anniversary. “It would be nice if people would wander around the art, too.”

Shechet’s wish was granted. The crowd dispersed in waves after the star attraction dipped. A weary procession walked down the gravel road to the exit, where the shuttle buses waited. Others ventured onto the winding grass path deeper into the grounds, growing smaller by distance and scale as they ascended the hill host to a tremendous Mark di Suvero abstraction. Like Charli said at the start, “We’re fine art bitches now.”