Governors Island Ferry at the Battery Maritime Building in Manhattan
As part of our expanding programs here at Art Fag City, we’re introducing a new feature BLNK, a photographic supplement to features we put together here and elsewhere. Today, Art Fag City photographer Juozas Cernius visits Governor’s Island, creating an accompanying essay to the profile I wrote for NYPress last week on Creative Time and their Executive Director Anne Pasternak. Thanks to Cernius we’ll all have a lot more visual information about what visitors can expect from a visit to Plot, Creative Time’s first quadrennial on the island.
Evoking Biblical references to Noah’s ark and the Gospel of Matthew, Mark Wallinger’s “Ferry” (Goats and Sheep signs) await passengers.
The ferry passes by Lawrence Weiner’s “AT THE SAME MOMENT.”
Characteristically text-based, Lawrence Weiner’s piece “AT THE SAME MOMENT” considers the phenomena of time via the experience of traveling to and from Governor’s Island by ferry.
Teresa Margolles’ Muro Baleado relocates a bullet-riddled cinder block rampart damaged by organized crime from her hometown of Culiacán, Mexico to Governor’s Island.
Anthony McCall’s “Between You and I” at Saint Cornelius Chapel consists of two beams of light continually approaching and pulling away from the other. According to the press release they are meant to evoke human interaction, though the movement of fog moving over these lights feels far less deliberate than the day to day exchanges most of us experience.
Shown at Liggett Hall, Guido van der Werve’s film “Number Four” continues the Dutch artist’s slapstick-meets-the profound cinematic exploration.
Through a peep-hole, AA Bronson & Peter Hobbs’ “Invocation of the Queer Spirits” at Colonel’s Row, a two acre plot of land that includes historic housing quarters.
Edgar Arceneaux’s “Sound Cannon Double Projection” location also at Colonel’s Row.
Fort Jay Theatre advertises Bruce High Quality Foundation’s screening of their film “Isle of the Dead,” humorously taking some peculiarities of the art world as their source material.
A visitor enters Fort Jay Theatre to view “Isle of the Dead” by The Bruce High Quality Foundation.
Tue Greenfort’s text-based piece “Project for the New American Century” appears on the side of a building in “Brick Village,” a group of structures set to be destroyed in Governor Island’s redevelopment. Critically appropriating the tone of Americans’ desire for cultural progression within his title, Greenfort harvests material from the interiors of property in “Brick Village” to make his piece.
Greenfort places new fences segregating buildings in the soon-to-be demolished Brick Village.
Krzysztof Wodiczko’s video “Veterans’ Flame” at Fort Jay Magazine pairs the personal narratives of war vets with the image of a candle. We weren’t huge fans of the piece as the flame moved in response to the narrative in precisely the same way the Zippo iPhone app functions, but Anne Pasternak assured us that the work was more effective than we thought. Apparently the stories are much more effective when not accompanied by screaming teenagers who watch the piece with us. We remain skeptical.
Meeting us at the end of our excursion through Plot, a plaque states that Governor’s Island was bought from the Indian tribe Manahatas for two axe heads, a string of beads, and a handful of nails in 1637. While the island has not been returned to the Manahatas, after years of military management it is now available to New York City’s public and can host ambitious projects like that of Creative Times’s new quadrennial.
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