Here is the new bench. Repository of memory/artifact.
It still carves, but in a more architectural way.
It is made of three elements: Four seats/engravers (the actors), two concrete slabs/pages (the acted upon), and the storehouse/home for the chairs. Sitting becomes ritual. The seats become participatory elements within this ritual. To sit on the bench, one removes a seat from storage, rolls it over the pages and sits. One does not sit on the pages. Each chair has an attached pin. When the chair is rolled over the pages via a series of rails, the pin etches a path into the pages and over time, erodes them. Each chair leaves its own trail (as seen in the plan). By participating in the act of sitting, one simultaneously records this act. After sitting, the chair is rolled back into storage. As the pin exits the groove in its page it drags with it dust that is then collected in a tray below the groove (thick grey bars in plan). Negative becomes positive. Memory recorded through displacement. When the chairs are in storage, the pages are left bare and accessible for reading. They become gauges of those who have sat before…
I am still working with the obelisks. I would like to, as a performative technique, do polyphonic/polychronic drawings (from Klee) drawings that show many spaces and many times simultaneously. If anybody knows of any drawings like this, please let me know, I would be curious to see them.
I am still working on site and program. When I was on the boat tour, I saw the hospital on Roosevelt island. The cloisters on the northern edge of manhattan are also interesting to me. It is an assemblage of many fragments of religious and non religious architecture from Europe. The old domino sugar factory is also a consideration along with central park. Central park might be nice because it is a massive void within the city. the aspect of the void alone would allow characters to develop in relation to the buildings outside of the void as well as in relation to themselves. These may all be possible sites for renovation… I still have to think about it.
2 comments:
I think it would be nice if you could do a drawing that shows the human body interacting with the ritual a the bench. Maybe it shows the change in the position of time throughout the movement of rolling the bench out.
I'm not saying that the following should be your program, but maybe it will help you think about activating characters in architecture. When we had the east river performance space project, which was a combined program of park and performance spaces, I made the decision to make three smaller performances spaces (instead of one large space as per the syllabus) and program them for the performance of avant garde and experimental music. Simultaneous to that I tried to combine the itinerary of going to a performance with the itinerary of people moving through the park in such a way that someone moving through the site was essentially performing a show to be seen by other people also moving through the space, who in turn become performances of movement for other people. My strategy for accomplishing this was to create a ground of shifting pathways and vantage points.
Essentially I created an empty stage for characters, but I think what you are really talking about is a set of stage and characters into which the inhabitant interlopes to write a new play. Perhaps for program you should think about rituals that we perform in public places. Just for example I am think abouting my ritual of going to Tillies, getting coffee, walking to the sugar counter, stirring my coffee in a particular way, throughing out the stirring stick in a particular way, etc.
this is much less intimate than the bench...
the body is not recorded as directly...
but i like these grooves...
maybe you should listen to LPs...
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