I visited the New Museum on a rainy Thursday night. My friend David and I made it through all the hipster paintings of Elizabeth Payton to the shaft space between the 3rd and 4th floors already depicted in the images that Robin’s contact sent us. Here are my photos: maybe you could open them up in a new window and read along with my comments?
The current exhibit, “Color. Location. Ultimate. Experience” which did not appeal to me on the website is quite compelling and kind of goofy. This is just to say that a lot of people were interested in checking it out.
http://picasaweb.google.com/stefans.bcn.birthday/NewMuseum#
Images 1,2, & 3. These two images are taken inside the shaft space. They used the space to put 11 monitors each showing different videos of the two performers dancing/moving in different environments. There was music that was playing in this room and it was subtly drifting out into the hallway. I can’t emphasize how small this space feels. I tried to pull the camera as far into the corner with each of these photos. The 3rd one with flash shows all our feet. With all those monitors and benches, only 4 of us could fit plus one person looking in from the hallway/stairway.
Images 4,5,6 & 7 These are all images of the long hallway with a lot of people in it- as they were all trying to get a look at the videos.
Images 8,9, & 10 These are images standing looking out the window space (part 2 of the shaft space) at a video projection that bounces off the adjacent building. It was raining. Often there were 7 people (see 7) trying to squeeze in this little space b/c the video was good and It was pretty cool to be looking at it through the rain and see it projected into and on this urban non-museum space. One of the people who works there told me it is also visible from Prince and Bowery, but I forgot to check this out b/c it was pouring so much (and someone stole our umbrella from the coat-check area.)
In the picture of David and I (8) you can see (to the left of David) some headphones. There was one set on either side. This was kind of a problem b/c not everybody could hear the sound, b/c there were never just two people there, (except during this picture but that’s only because the projector had overheated and David had just switched it back on) but I didn’t feel the sound was a critical part of the video, either.
I can’t emphasize how compelling this outdoor projection was to people. They were willing to stand REALLY close to each other to watch it for a WHILE. They were NOT crowding around the Payton’s with the same enthusiasm. However, clearly this would only work at night. I really recommend we try to use this window/outdoor space somehow.
CLUE (color, location etc.) tied together a bunch of clothes like a rope and draped this down one side of the staircase. Seems like the New Museum would be open to a use of the stairway and that wall-space along the staircase if we found that useful as well.
