Photo © Bernadette Cruz
I visited New York City’s Park Avenue Armory just after the holidays and finally checked out what I had seen all over the internet and heard about for weeks since Ann Hamilton‘s “the art of a thread” show opened there on December 5. It was nearly 7pm on the night my colleague David and I entered the enormous gymnasium and began interacting with the large scale installation.
Photo © Bernadette Cruz
Photo © Bernadette Cruz
Suspended from the ceiling by an intricate system of pulleys and rope, numerous swings were interspersed throughout the room. The movement of these swings, and those who were perched upon them, controlled the ebb and flow of a giant white curtain which also hung from the ceiling. David and I finally stuck around long enough to acquire an empty swing and hopped on together. Swinging to and fro, I admired that collectively, with our neighboring swingers, we were all creating this ever changing space. As a graduate of Communication Studies, one of my favorite theories is Relational Dialectics (Baxter & Montgomery, 1997): a concept that tries to explain patterns of contradictory tensions and conceptual assumptions. For example, “opposites attract” but “birds of a feather flock together”. I was reminded of this theory as David and I continued to explore the space, the elements of Hamilton’s installation, and the opposing scenarios therein.
Photo © Bernadette Cruz
On one end of the gymnasium, a man and woman simultaneously recited different text into old school ’50s style microphones while on the other end, a woman silently wrote letters to be sent out to post. The end of the night seemed to be approaching as the lights dimmed and the artist herself released caged pigeons from the center of the room. The pigeons were summoned by ringing bells to a large cage near the ceiling. On the opposite end of the gym, an opera singer walked out onto a balcony and sang a beautifully powerful aria. David and I learned that new arias were recorded each evening, and replayed when the exhibit reopened the next morning, like daily bookends for the project. There was so much going on at the same time, and in continuum, so after more than an hour at the Armory, I left creatively satisfied and eager to write this post.
Photo © Bernadette Cruz
From Ann Hamilton about the art of a thread:
Suspended in the liquidity of words, reading also sets us in motion. We fall between a book’s open covers, into the texture of the paper and the regularity of the line. The rhythm and breath of someone reading out loud take us to a world far away. As a child, I could spend hours pressed against the warmth of my grandmother’s body listening to her read, the rustling of her hand turning the page, watching the birds and the weather outside, transported by the intimacy of a shared side by side.
No two voices are alike. No event is ever the same. Each interaction in this project is both made and found. All making is an act of attention and attention is an act of recognition and recognition is the something happening that is thought itself. As a bird whose outreached wings momentarily catch the light and change thought’s course, we attend the presence of the tactile and perhaps more importantly – we attend to each other. If on a swing, we are alone, we are together in a field. This condition of the social is the art of a thread. Our crossings with its motions, sounds, and textures is its weaving; is a social act.
.stART here. 