Thirty volunteers spent three days shredding two thousand New York City telephone books in preparation for one of the most unusual exhibitions staged by a downtown gallery: Dash Snow and Dan Colen’s NEST.

Recreating their infamous “hamster nest” at 76 Grand Street, the pair opened up a practice that had previously existed only in private. What visitors encountered was the aftermath and the act itself: a chaotic environment of shredded paper, debris and excess, accompanied by video and photographic documentation.

Typically, a “Hamster Nest” involved tearing through vast quantities of whatever paper was available, ransacking a space in an exuberant, overnight burst. These interventions often took place in hotel rooms across the world, leaving behind only scattered Polaroids, fragments of video, and the lingering memory of it all, usually shared by less-than-amused hotel staff.