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Artists Liberate Corporate Plazas for Downtown Festival
Artists Meeting, a light hearted group of artists who have been working together for two and a half years, is presenting a series of performance / interventions in the POPS Plazas of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. The Artists Meeting Project titled “Public Exhibition Space” is part of a larger Arts Festival called Conflux that is taking place downtown – Sept. 11 – 14th
From: Artists Meeting – http://artistsmeeting.org
For further information contact –
artmeet@nujus.net
info@conflux.org
POPS plazas (privately owned public space) are plazas which real estate developers have created over the years to receive special favors from the city such as a tax abatement or the approval to build a much higher building than zoning allows. The POPS spaces have recently come under scrutiny in the press because many of the owners have reneged on their agreements and privatized the spaces making them inaccessible to the public. (see: New York Times, Real Estate Section, BIG DEAL; Home Sweet Home on the Plaza, By JOSH BARBANEL, Published: December 17, 2006) and (New York Times:NEW YORK REGION / THE CITY | May 25, 2008 East Side: A New Study Faults Plazas as Public in Name, Private in Look By GREGORY BEYER )
The Plazas are often pocket parks or simply a series of benches that office workers use to sit and eat their lunch or take a break from their cubicles. Artists Meeting will offer interesting and challenging performances that will entertain, provoke thought and activate the public nature of these spaces. For instance, the group will make the uncomfortable POPS benches more amenable by adding custom fabricated cushions, that would be at home in any high-end Soho Designers’ Loft. The pillows will be distributed by a performance artist (pillow man) bedecked by pillows that he will detach from his costume as part of the performance.
Pillows for (POPS), Date: Sept. 11th to 14th, Time:Continuous, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Artist Meeting
Artists Meeting has enlisted the help of an upstart firm, Frowners Global that will set up information / sympathy tables to help relieve the job stress of local office workers.
Frowners' Global, Date: Sept.12 & Sept.13, Various times, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Artist Meeting
If you are downtown and on your way to the South Street Seaport Museum you can stop at 200 Water Street, and experience an interactive sound artwork by Leesa & Nicole Abahuni. This gentle audio feedback occurs when passerby sit in the brightly colored metal chair at the base of the non-functioning (and perhaps first) digital clock of the former New York Cocoa Exchange building. Public Experiment #2 - sound piece using metal benches, Date: Sept.13, Time: 12 noon (continuous)
The street layout of Lower Manhattan grew from the original chaotic footprint of a unplanned village that was the original 17th Century Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. The absurdity of skyscrapers on an old town layout of narrow streets and micro-plazas creates a darkness and oppressiveness on its' inhabitants that inspired Maria Joao Salema to create a series of “Pleasant Places” postcards based on Dutch fantasy landscape prints from the same period. She will copy a series of Dutch fantasy landscapes from the 17th century onto postcards and give them out to people. Maria Joao Salema remarks that the Netherlands of that period was the beginning of the sort of free market trading capitalism that Lower Manhattan stands for now. Pleasant Places – free postcards, Date: Sept.11 to Sept.14, Time: noon to 5pm, Location: 55 Broad St., Financial District, Artist - Maria João Salema
In a more critical gesture, Daniel Blochwitz wishes to point out the ambiguous nature of the privately owned public spaces or POPS. He questions whether the trading of (prime real state) space for (public) space between developers and the City really creates valuable communal and green urban areas. After all, most of these so-called public spaces seem to be dark niches, corners and alleyways dressed up with a few mall features and shrubs, and often discourage leisurely use and lingering. And as gated, guarded, and surveilled as the POPS are, one has to wonder about their role within a larger system of control. To highlight this the group will use barricade tape marked with the words “NOT PUBLIC!” to symbolically block off several of the POPS spaces.
Not Public!, Date: Sept. 11-14, Time continuous, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Daniel Blochwitz
The Financial District is the end destination for countless commuters from New Jersey. Driving your car into work every day is something that almost every person does. There are many stresses that people don’t account for that range from the entirely personal distress of being snarled in traffic to the global stress of global warming brought on by automobile exhaust fumes. To point these out, Eliza Fernbach has created a billboard on route 1 & 9 in New Jersey with the words, Rushing to Your Death? printed on it, she will also be handing out rushing to your death bumper stickers. Rushing To Your Death? – Billboard and stickers, Date: Sept. 11th to 14th, Time: continuous, Billboard on NJ Routes 1&9 Eastbound towards Manhattan. Visible on the left hand side of the road before the Pulaski Skyway. http://www.rushingtoyourdeath.com
Artist - Eliza Fernbach
After 9/11 Lower Manhattan became an armed camp. Many of the federal buildings and the streets of the financial district have steel and concrete barricade that protect the buildings and stop pontential truck bombers from coming close to their targets. The re-building of the WTC site has been slow with many changes that effect the feelings of those who yearn for a memorial to the developers concern for maximum square footage and the city’s real fear that the WTC and the Financial District are prime terrorist targets. Two pieces highlight these aspects and also question the public spaces that are being limited by the fear of terrorists. Lee Wells has designed a sticker that is a white smiley face on a black background with the word “warning” printed on it. The sticker calls attention to the sense of fear that shrouds downtowns’ public spaces. G.H. Hovagimyan and Thomas Hutchison will do an intervention on September 11th with specially printed barricade tape. The tape has the words Unknown Unmade Unseen Undone printed on it. These words evoke all the emotions surrounding the WTC site and function as a temporary silent memorial.
Smiley Project -happiness warning stickers, Sept. 11th to 14th, Time: continuous. Artist - Lee Wells
Barrier Tape Piece - UnknownUnmadeUnseenUndone
Sept. 11th (noon) - Millennium Hotel & WTC site, Sept. 12th, (noon-7pm)
Artists – G.H. Hovagimyan & Thomas Hutchison
The Artists Meeting group has spent several long days walking and researching the POPS plazas of downtown. G.H. Hovagimyan says that the plazas reminded him of the 1965 movie Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard. James Andrews then remarked, “Plazaville,”
Plazaville - video remake, Sept.13 & 14. (noon-7pm), Artist - G.H. Hovagimyan with Christina McPhee
Finally Raphaele Shirley will do a temporary sculpture installation that will also be a closing party called, “Melted City.” The event is inspired by the architecture and the vision of New York as values and cultural perspectives morph over time, creating a psycho-geopgraphical sketch of a transitional cityscape. The work involves, hand made sculptures, lasers, smoke and mirrors, sounds and the audience who show up for the event. Melted City - Site specific installation, Date Sept.14th, Time:7pm-10pm, Location: 60 Wall St., Plaza Artist - Raphaele Shirley
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
