The Encampment by Thom Sokoloski on Roosevelt Island

Between 1828 and 1955, artist Thom Sokoloski tells us, Roosevelt Island was the site of a small pox hospital, a lunatic asylum, a workhouse, and a penitentiary. In an effort to recapture a bit of the "collective memory" of the thousands of men, women and children who were confined to and, mostly, died in miserable conditions within sight of Manhattan, last weekend Sokoloski erected The Encampment, consisting of 100 19th-century "expeditionary" tents at Southpoint, an open grassy area normally closed to the public on the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. Each tent was lit from within, and each featured an installation by a different artist. The show was only open last Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, from 7:00 until 1:00 am, and Bo, Co and I traveled across the river last night to take it in.

We had a great time getting there (I pitched it as an "adventure", and didn't reveal the destination... had I said "art installation two subway trains away" there's no way I could have gotten them out the door ), and even more fun walking around and peering behind the 100 closed tent flaps and feeling surprised or creeped out or moved or, too often, disengaged, by the visual stories told therein. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of repetition in the executions, an empty set of clothes being the most common.



But, really, there's no way we're going to complain about all these people going through all that effort to do something cool. (Well, that's entirely true. I definitely can complain about such things.) The night was foggy and cool; the setting unusual; the gutted small pox hospital guarding the entrance appropriately sad and ghostly; the Manhattan skyline beautiful, as always; the collaboration as a whole an impressive sight; and when the music played—a pair of trumpets doing a mournful call and response from either end of the encampment; a woman strolling through the tents, clutching a (fake) dead infant and singing a lovely dirge in a unknown language—the show had that great "nowhere else I'd rather be" feel to it.



The Encampment was part of the Open House New York weekend, and it was the only such site we got to this year. The train ride home was total nightmare, and given other stories I've heard today, we can only hope that the next time a city-sponsored event entices people to visit far-flung parts of town, they ask the MTA to please cooperative.

Art Under the Bridge Festival in Dumbo

If you're looking for something different to do tomorrow, I highly recommend heading over to Dumbo for the 11th Annual Art Under the Bridge Festival. I had such a good time there this afternoon, wandering around and chatting with artists and feeling the sun and just enjoying the friendly, festive atmosphere.

There are open artists' studios and galleries galore if you're so inclined—and, of course, plenty of high-end, designy stores to browse, as well as lots of food and drink—but I mostly stuck with the event- and site-specific stuff, the performance art and sculptures and interactive pieces, which easily filled two and a half hours or so of my day. Anyway: just go. Here's a look at some of the things you may see (as always, click on any image to enlarge)...

Ianthe Jackson and Pauline Marcelle's "Floating Picnic". Got me seasick just watching them.


"Keep Off the Grass" by Myk Henry and Cynthia Rise. Not really, though... you can go on it.


"The Poetics of Night Soil", for which smudge studio invites you to "use the loo as you normally would", then add a cup of compost to the box. Needless to say, I declined to interact with this piece.


Cabbage football. Team Cole Slay won.



I spent many minutes loving the work at the Museum of Modern Arthur—or, MOMAR—before I realized that the Arthur in question was in fact Joseph Arthur, the excellent musician. So cool.

I thought this "painting" elephant was ridiculous (the old hippie guy is clearly moving that poor beast's trunk!), but it sure was a crowd-pleaser.


"The Tub Project", by Chloe Douglas and Fred Brehm. Occasionally, people did things in these cast iron tubs, all restored by hand, as below...



John Bonafede's "Clean Cream(a lot) Cave". That's all shaving cream on the walls and ceiling; in the interior is a video in which someone gets... can you guess?... a shave. I didn't see the piece which goes with the Cave, but I wish I had: apparently it involves three cream-covered performers dragging two business women atop a manhole cover through the streets.


Plastic-bottle chickens, in the dramatic beauty of Empire Fulton Ferry State Park.


Matt Pych laid down his "Dispersed Arguments" using individual letter stencils and birdseed... so I'll guess they'll last about as long as the importance of most of the arguments in which we've been reduced to using lines like these!

Sponsored by the Dumbo Arts Center, the Art Under the Bridge Festival continues tomorrow, Sunday, September 30. I took the F train to York Avenue (the first stop in Brooklyn) and that puts you right where you want to be, but there are, of course, other travel options. For a complete schedule, map, directions and such, you can download a guide here. Or do what I did and just show up and explore.

Mike Nelson: A Psychic Vacuum

If you ever thought it'd be cool to explore an abandoned building on the Lower East Side, but for obvious reasons—an aversion to rats, crackheads, bad smells, filth—have resisted the temptation, then I suggest you spend 30 minutes or so at some point over the next few weekends getting lost in Mike Nelson's creepy, obsessively detailed, sometimes witty, labyrinthine installation in the old Essex Street Market, A Psychic Vacuum.

Now, there are no great artistic epiphanies to be had here—Nelson used found objects from all over the city to decorate the nearly 6,500 square-feet space, the broader significance of which for the most part escaped me—and some of the assemblages feel forced.

But the dead ends, the claustrophobic corridors and dimly-lit rooms, the pallor of dust and aura of decrepitude all definitely gnaw at you. And the art work's final space packs a brilliant visceral punchline.

Although my courageous daughters probably would have gotten a kick out of the work's maze-like setup, I think the bones, the grime and the suggestion of violence might have freaked them out a little, and so I'm glad I decided to go alone.

Mike Nelson's A Psychic Vacuum runs through October 28th. The installation is open from noon until 6:00, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The entrance is on Delancey Street, just east of Essex. Admission is free: you sign a waiver in an open storefront, and then enter through the boarded-up Chinese restaurant.

The Art Parade in Soho 2007

Despite the somewhat sweltering conditions, my ever-festive daughters and I had a blast today at the Soho Art Parade, laughing and whooping it up at the more than 80 different raucous, sexified, politicized, downright goofy, and, obviously, all quite mobile performance pieces.

Sponsored by Deitch Projects, Paper Magazine and Creative Time, this now-annual extravaganza, running down West Broadway from Prince to Grand Streets, has definitely become a family favorite. We love the art itself—the floats and balloons, the costumes and concepts, the music and chaos and freebies (lots of food this year)—which, though of course varying wildly in creativity and execution, consistently engaged and delighted for the entire half-hour-plus procession.

We love the event's almost flash-mob dynamic: there was virtually no one waiting by the barricades when we arrived at 3:30; there were thousands of revelers when the procession got under way at 4:00; then the whole scene went back to a normal Soho Saturday by about 4:45.

And we love the open-to-all feeling; the welcoming, friendly spirit of the marchers and watchers alike; and the event's nearly non-corporate-ness. Anyway, it was a ton of fun, and here's a bunch more pictures which, if you click, will enlarge...

HBO Voyeur Project on Ludlow Street

Yes, it's just an advertisement (for a new online, and On Demand, series) but it's pretty cool nonetheless. On the side of a building overlooking a parking lot on Ludlow Street, the marketing folks from HBO are screening a five-minute short film that peers into the homes and, as it turns out, the stupendously eventful lives, of the residents inside.

To whit: in one apartment a woman in labor is blocked from exiting the building by a couch-move gone awry, and so the frantic couple has to crash their neighbors' strip-poker game and deliver the baby there. Across the hall and one flight down, a woman ties up her lover... and then starts sharpening her knives. On the ground floor an elderly woman says goodbye to what we can only presume is her husband of many years, and then we watch as her ghost drifts up through the building and out through the roof.

There's a lot more happening—I watched it three times and still couldn't follow it all—and it's all very (and appropriately) broadly played and melodramatic, and it's totally not worth a special trip, but if you're in the neighborhood tonight, Sunday July 8th—the LAST NIGHT it's showing—it's definitely worth stopping by for a viewing. Or three.

The HBO Voyeur Project will be screened for one more night, Sunday, July 8, from 9 until 11, in the parking lot on Ludlow Street, just south of Delancey (the same place, by the way, where Shakespeare in the Parking Lot begins its performances of Romeo and Juliet next week).

Gernika/Guernica at One Chase Plaza

While Bo and I were goofing around the financial district the other day we decided to check out Anita Glesta's site-specific work Gernika/Guernica at One Chase Manhattan Plaza. Sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Glesta's mixed-media sculpture commemorates, through oral history, the 70th anniversary of the fascist carpet bombing—and subsequent civilian slaughter—of the Basque town Gernika during the Spanish Civil War, as well as paying homage to Picasso's painting "Guernica" that brought worldwide attention to the massacre. It is, Bo and I thought, a compelling concept that falters in its execution, but still worth seeing if you happen to be strolling through the area. If nothing else, it gave me an excellent excuse to play history professor with my daughter!

Here's how it works: scattered about the giant planters on the western end of the Plaza are eight individual, motion activated bronze speakers that play, at an unbelievably loud volume, in English and Spanish, the recorded memory of a Gernika survivor. On top of each speaker sits a small bronze sculpture, disembodied, if you will, from Picasso's masterpiece: a bull's horn, a foot, a hand, a heart. Problem is, the oral history struck me as too generic to be genuinely moving—lots of memories of "bright flashes" and "heat" and such, all of which is tragic to be sure, but not terribly revelatory. And the scale of the pieces felt off, too. I somehow wanted them to be bigger, perhaps to compete a little more firmly with Chase's monument to money looming above.

Obviously, the location of Gernika/Guernica a few blocks from the pit where once stood the Twin Towers is no accident either. But are there any parallels between the two events, other than the slaughter of civilians? Does there need to be? Hmmmm...

Gernika/Guernica will be on display at the western end of One Chase Manhattan Plaza through July 12. Photo op alert! If you're visiting from out of town, and you plan on walking around this area anyway, may I suggest stopping by the Plaza to see Jean DuBuffet's Group of Four Trees, pictured at right (click on image to enlarge), which does hold its own nicely below the skyscraper.

Roxy Paine in Madison Square Park

The revitalization of Madison Square Park has to be one of the city's great success stories of the aught years, transforming this six-acre plot from a decrepit haven for junkies and thugs to a vibrant, grassy public space that's packed everyday at lunchtime (thanks in part to the ridiculously popular Shake Shack), and that provides a comfortable venue from which to view such landmarks as the beautiful Flatiron building, the slightly silly Eleven Madison Avenue (designed to be 100 stories tall, they stopped construction on floor 29 when the Great Depression hit... so it's all base, no finish), and the Metropolitan Life building (a century ago, the tallest in the world). What we also now have in Madison Square Park is art, usually interesting and fun, currently three new stainless steel sculptures by Roxy Paine.

The clear favorite here (at least, of Debbie and myself) is the show's centerpiece, Conjoined, though I think that's far too inactive a name for such a dynamic piece: two full-size industrial trees, set in the middle of the park's largest lawn, one standing tall, the other lurching in, spindly branches touching in dozens of places. Are they dancing...? Battling...? Embracing..?

Also intriguing is Defunct, which greets you as you enter from the southwest corner. Standing in the park's dustiest patch, this is another bright and shiny tree, 42-feet tall, desiccated, broken, and stumpy from age or disease. It's sad but also strong. Paine's third sculpture is the least engaging, we thought. Erratic is a stainless steel boulder that, despite its scales and irregularities, called to mind nothing more than a baked potato.

Madison Square Park is located between 23rd and 26th Streets, and Fifth and Madison Avenues. All three of Roxy Paine's pieces will be up until December 31. Note to out-of-town visitors: Danny Meyer's Shake Shack, which serves better-than-average burgers, fries and frozen custard, has a fanatical following. If you're planning on eating here—and it's definitely a nice spot to picnic—allow at least 45 minutes to get your order.