“This World & Nearer Ones”

Slide 1: Anthony McCall, Between You and I
This piece continues the artist’s ongoing exploration of film as a medium to create “sculptural space.” Here, a pair of projectors hung from the ceiling point straight down, using the physical properties of light encountering particles in the air—like mist or dust—to create an “architecture of vapor.” The side-by-side animations, one of an ellipse becoming a traveling wave, the other, of a traveling wave becoming an ellipse, move slowly and imperceptibly, until each gradually takes on the form of the other.

Slide 2: Teresa Margolles, Muro Baleado/Shot-Up Wall, June 2008
The artist relocated this intact cinder-block wall from her hometown of Culiacán, Mexico—also known among the locals as Narco City for the illicit drug trade that’s been a central part of the town’s economy since the 1950s. The wall is riddled with real bullet holes from drug-related shootings.

Slide 3: The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Isle of the Dead
The Bruce High Quality Foundation, a Brooklyn-based artists’ collective, is screening its film Isle of the Dead in an abandoned movie theater on Governors Island: It tells the story of a decimated art world coming back to life in zombie form. The film’s inspiration is twofold—zombie classics like Night of the Living Dead and “zombie protests,” meaning flash mobs that are all action and no agenda. At the heart of the piece is an anxiety about the current state of the art world, and a skepticism about the idea that the collapse of the art market will automatically lead to a return to the sort of radically conceptual art that defined the 1960s and ’70s.

Slide 4: Lawrence Weiner, At the Same Moment
One of the pioneers of Conceptual Art, Weiner here has painted the eponymous phrase in large letters across one of the slips at the Governors Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan. The words are meant to remind people on the boats that although the two points of their trip—the bustling metropolis on one hand, the rustic island on the other—are seemingly worlds apart, they coexist in time and geography.

Slide 5: Mark Wallinger, Ferry
Meanwhile, on the ferry itself, Mark Wallinger will offer a curious sight to people coming aboard: two signs mounted on the upper deck railing reading, respectively, Goats and Sheep. It’s a reference to a passage in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus promises to separate all people—as a shepherd separates his sheep from his goats—based on the kindness of their deeds, determining their fate for eternity. A meditation on how we as humans make choices, the signs, the artist says, “are not meant to divide people, but rather to encourage each passenger to consider the moments in life when she or he must assess the options, weigh the pros and cons, and pick a side.”

Slide 6: Tercerunquinto, Insular Act
The title of this piece alludes to an intricately planned out and choreographed act of vandalism perpetrated by this Mexican art collective (the name means “third of a fifth,” referring to the fact that this formerly five-person group is now down to three artists—Julio Castro, Gabriel Cázares, and Rolando Flores. The exhibit documents the offending action after the fact—in this case, the deed was the tossing of a small rock through a closed window in one of the historic buildings dotting Governors Island. The rock was removed and the glass replaced, leaving only this group of photos and drawings as testament to what had transpired.

Slide 7: Klaus Weber, Large Dark Wind Chime (Tritone Westy)
Unlike most wind chimes, Weber’s humongous version has been tuned to the mysterious diabolus in musica tritone, a musical interval that spans three whole tones to dissonant and melancholic effect. Since medieval times, this specific tritone has been associated with the devil and the ability to sexually arouse listeners.

Slide 8: Edgar Arceneaux, Sound Cannon Double Projection
Arceneaux’s audio installation actually emits inaudible sound waves, set to a very low frequency, which researchers say provoke feelings of unease or anxiety—even the chills—in listeners. If that sounds spooky, consider the fact that paranormal experts believe such pulsations are often a feature of allegedly haunted locations.

Slide 9: Nils Norman, Temporarily Permanent Monument to the Occupation of Pseudo Public Space
Norman’s work, located near Castle Williams, is supposed to remind viewers of the sort of tent cities that often sprout up around the sites of massive political demonstrations. However, the structures here are empty, representing, as it were, protest architecture for a nonexistent protest.

Slide 10: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Veterans’ Flame
Projected in a dark room within Fort Jay near the island’s southern end, the naked candle flame in this video flickers with the recorded voices of soldiers—veterans the artist interviewed in April 2009—who share their accounts of war and its aftermath in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This World & Nearer Ones” opens Sat 27 on Governors Island.

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