Since when is climate control in a museum considered a work of art? Isn't it obligatory for art institutions to protect and preserve artworks by presenting them within a certain climate, well balanced in both temperature and humidity? Generally yes, even though P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York's best known ex-Primary School in LIC, lacks such a protective climate control system - a fact which one suspects might cause problems when trying to borrow famous or delicate artworks from other institutions. Only in one of P.S.1's special projects-rooms, a complex of galvanized steel ducts currently offers standard conditions by providing this single gallery with a complete Heating-Ventilation-Air Conditioning-system.

Entering the room leaves no doubt that you are within a working, circulating mechanism:

A cubic duct, covering the radiator (which now functions as exchange ventilator), builds the "heart" of the system. Starting from here, in- and out-take aluminum pipes of different sizes embrace the room. Following a well-articulated route, they take advantage of the entire space. They even extend beyond it, sneaking out through one window and in again through another in a sexy curve - almost recalling the polished engine of a precious motorbike when hit by a sunbeam. (Maybe the form here does not exactly follow the function - but who knows?) The silver colored metal ducts fit closely to the eccentric lines of the room. Their shiny newness stands out against the dilapidated condition of the tin ceiling, where deep holes exist unrepaired, suddenly revealed like open wounds.

While HVAC-systems are usually hidden behind the walls of buildings, here the relationship of power and surface has been turned inside out. The isolation and explication of an essential operative function of an institution and its concentration into a room that makes up only about 2% of the building's square footage leads to a void beyond the work and its physical presence. The conceptual act of re- and displacement simultaneously emphasizes and undermines its central function: through their massive self-containment, the ducts become indicators of absent things. The object itself, with its minimal machine aesthetic, might also be seen as a humorous comment on the modernist tradition.

Climate Control is an environment in its best sense. Not only in terms of a traverseable, site-specific and interactive installation - but also because it literally provides environmental conditions on different levels of sensual (and intellectual) perception.

The difference is recognizable as soon as you enter the space. You can feel the warm air coming out from the pipes. The small humidifier exhales clouds of slightly warm mist, and you can hear the promising noise of the rotating vents. The climate is undeniably comfortable. In fact, not one, but two thermostats, one digital, one analog, measure both temperature and humidity. Et voilą: the results match and show the perfect conditions.

Ironically the thing works for no purpose - there is no "art" in that room that benefits from Climate Control. Just one photograph on the wall makes a connection to another work of the artist, Michael Rakowitz. It documents paraSITE, an ongoing project in public space, where Rakowitz uses air ventilation systems as well. Here the heating units serve "ready-made" as dispensers of warm air for inflatable shelters for homeless people. Those shelters, poetic metaphors on urban nomadism, were each designed individually by the artist in cooperation with their inhabitants and function as a mixture of sleeping bag and portable home, inflated by the warm air expelled by vents of industrial buildings. They take advantage of energy that would be lost otherwise, but which could now possibly save lives.