Well before OPEN was open, 2012 or so, we were living together in Brooklyn, renting two rooms in a four bedroom apartment. One was a sort of secondary living room we called Club Sandwich. Club Sam, as it came to be known, contained a loveseat purchased from a film props cleanout sale, a disco ball, an Ikea shelf filled with books, and lots of promotional booze obtained from one of our jobs in nightlife. It was our bonus room—a modest bit of extra space to sit, sip, relax, collage, read, and be.

A bit before OPEN was open, we were talking about what, exactly, it would be. If it turned out that gallery shows were few and far between, or if a third space concept didn’t work out, we thought “Well, we could always sort of recreate Club Sam and just hang out there.” That’s kind of what Bonus Room is: Club Sam reimagined in the context of a small gallery.

There are many inspirations for doing this. John Lurie’s room at MoMA PS1, Tracey Emin’s My Bed (though, less depressed), and period piece rooms at The Met. Two recent local shows come to mind, too: Rafay Rashad’s Wreck Room at OPEN, and GO ‘HEAD, FIX YOU A PLATE at AS220, a colaborative work by Jazzmen Lee-Johnson and Persephone Allen. Both directly considered the gallery as a third space; the lines between viewer and participant were blurred.

In Bonus Room, a ping pong table that belonged to grandparents is paired with a bunch of stuff from Savers (aka The Peoples’ MoMA). This could have just as easily been a yard sale: a chess-themed bench and table set, a vintage stained-glass bar lamp, assorted board games, a metal Peanuts trash can, a TV/VCR and a dozen or so movies. 

Bonus Room is free for tenants of 50 Sims and their friends to pop-by and hang out. Its also for the general public, but requires a step: if you’d like to reserve a few hours in the gallery to play board games, ping pong, or just kind of sit around and do whatever, let us know and we’ll see what’s possible. We also have decent WiFi, clean W/Cs, a water filter, and are in close proximity to ISCO, Buttonwoods, New Harvest, etc. Email ben.sisto@gmail.com.