Metropolis Ensemble’s Debut in Central Park with Creative Time – The Round-Up
According to T Magazine, Creative Time’s Drifting in Daylight was “the most geographically expansive arts project in Central Park since the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s 2005 installation The Gates was placed along 23 miles of paths in 2005.”
From May 15th through June 20th Central Park was transformed into a multimedia installation piece. Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park, celebrated Central Park Conservancy’s 35th anniversary.
For the 12 days the exhibition was open to the public, it was estimated that over 100,000 people encountered the exhibition. Doug Blonsky, the conservancy’s president and C.E.O. said it is intended to celebrate “the quiet of the park and the surprises one can find wandering its paths.”
In Drifting in Daylight, Metropolis Ensemble collaborated with the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson to reprise his balletic sculpture and endurance art-piece, S.S. Hangover, originally commissioned for the 2013 Venice Biennale. The piece was inspired by a photo still from the 1935 film, Remember Last Night which Kjartansson found in a vintage cocktail recipe book.
Metropolis Ensemble musicians performed on a refurbished 1930’s fishing vessel, in full tux and concert gown regalia. It was not all smooth sailing – the boat arrived last February from Venice frozen solid with ice and snow. Members of The Northern Brooklyn Boating Club worked tirelessly to patch the holes, replace the flooded one-of-a-kind engine, and repaint the infamous fat Pegasus sail. The piece was performed (with music from Sigur Ros composer Kjartan Sveinsson) about 30 times a day from memory and over 375 times over the course of the exhibition.
Here’s a quick catch up of some of the artists featured at this exciting event: Lauri Stallings and her dance activist collaborators known as glo, performed a dance and spoken word piece inspired by the musical legacy of Harlem and the Great Migration of African Americans northward. Spence Finch gave out delicious solar powered sunset soft served ice cream, to match the sky near the parks conservatory garden. And finally, performance, video, and photo artist David Levine reenacted famous films that took place in Central Park.
See below the complete social and press roundup!
The Social Media Buzz…
#DriftingInDaylight was used on Instagram over 2400 times, and hundreds more photos were certainly taken without the hashtag.
The Drifting in Daylight post on @instagram got over 1 million likes and 7,800 comments!
The Press…
For Its Next Big Project, Creative Time Heads to Central Park in T Magazine
S.S. Hangover is Coming to Central Park This Year in Gothamist
America’s Best Public Art for Summer 2015 in Bloomberg Business
Calvin Klein Collection and Creative Time Celebrate Drifting in Daylight in Vogue
Fantastical Performance Art Drifts into Central Park in Time Out New York (Print)
Central Park Pop-Up Art in The New Yorker
Creative Time to Take Over Some of Central Park This May in Art Observed
Marisa Tomei’s Perfect Proportions in The New York Times
The 10 Most Crazy/Beautiful Art Happenings This Most Wild Of Frieze Weekends in Huffington Post
Review: ‘Please Touch the Art’ and 'Drifting in Daylight,’ Outdoor Art at the Parks in the New York Times
Meet first female director of major NYC art institution on MSNBC
post by: Sequoia Sellinger