January 17, 2007
THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS
For the next 28 evenings, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in midtown Manhattan has offered itself up as a canvas to visual artist Doug Aitken in collaboration with the public arts group Creative Time.
The Museum of Modern Art and Creative Time, the New York–based public art organization, have jointly commissioned Doug Aitken to create the artist's first large-scale public artwork in the United States. The project is also the first to bring art to MoMA's exterior walls. Eight continuous sequences of film scenes will be projected onto six facades, including those on West Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets and those overlooking The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. Inspired by the densely built environment of New York's midtown, the artist will create a cinematic art experience that directly integrates with the architectural fabric of the city while simultaneously enhancing and challenging viewers' perceptions of public space. The project, filmed in New York City, will be shown daily from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m., and is intended to be visible from many public vantage points adjacent to the Museum.
The installation will show the stories of five different NYC characters' lives as they venture out into the night and features Ryan Donowho, Seu Jorge, Cat Power, Tilda Swinton, and Donald Sutherland. I am not familiar with any of Aitken's previous work, but this New York Magazine article makes him sound like someone I'd like to hang out with:
Aitken loves to scout for exotic new locations. To shoot one of Donowho’s scenes, Aitken and his crew broke into the abandoned nineteenth-century vault of the Atlantic Avenue tunnel, dropping in through a manhole, crawling across an endless dirt passage, then lowering themselves down a broken ladder into utter blackness. “It was like falling into a new world,” he says. Similarly, he used the heliport atop the MetLife Building, which has been closed off since a deadly crash in 1977, as well as a postal sorting center in Queens and an ice rink in Staten Island. Perhaps the most exciting discovery was the bowels of several giant signs in Times Square, including a Coke ad and the nasdaq scroll. “You’re climbing on massive catwalks and scaffolding surrounded by banks and banks of circuitry and flashing red and green lights,” he says. “It’s almost like 2001: A Space Odyssey in there.”
Visit the installation's web site with a Flash presentation here. "Sleepwalkers" will be shown from the present through February 12th. MoMA is fronted on 53rd St., which is probably the best place to start seeing the piece: in front of the museum, walking West and turning North through the open space between 53rd and 54th, then making a right to head East down 54th St., making a short jog in and around the Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, and then heading off towards 5th Ave. to discuss with your companion what you just watched. More complete viewing instructions are downloadable here.
For those who simply can't wait, here's the 60 second trailer embedded from YouTube:
Posted by Lexiphane at January 17, 2007 3:13 AM
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