"The Sixth Borough" is on view at Governor's Island through September 25. It's FREE to the public and the ferry is FREE from Lower Manhattan!

There are some places where proud New Yorkers do not lurk.  The Staten Island Ferry, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, for example, seem to appear as blips on an insider’s map of the city; places to take your third cousins after their eyes start hurting from the flash of photographing Times Square.  But if those token sites are tourist landmarks, then Governors’ Island is a passing thought – the forgotten isle.  It is an enchanting experience, then, to visit this forgotten location and discover New York’s treasures anew.  This summer, however, Governors’ Island isn’t just a historic area but is transformed, courtesy of the organization No Longer Empty, into The Sixth Borough.

The Sixth Borough is an exhibition based in the rooms of four historic houses on Colonel Row, a set of residential homes previously occupied by military officers and their families.  These houses have not been properly restored or renovated; decay and water stains are clearly visible.  But while only art materials now inhabit these rooms, Colonel’s Row is truly no longer empty.  Instead, its filled with people’s memories and feelings – past and present- invested in creative work.

The pieces in The Sixth Borough are varied and unique.  Luis Palma’s photography catches isolation and personal memory and preserves it, literally, by using gold leaf and red paper with his prints, and then dipping them in resin.  Amelia Biewald’s “Mutualism” and Andrea Mastrovito’s “Island of Dr. Mastrovito”  explore the nature versus civilization tension by evoking organic images that utilize the space.  Teresa Diehl screens footage of a child being cared for onto glittering fishing net wire, calling upon the viewer to consider the room’s former occupants (pictured in the top photo).  Natasha Johns-Messenger constructs an understated fun house of mirrors with walls painted a bright lime-green.

"The intersection of natural resources and technology is frosted over with the salt crystals, creating a city of overwhelming beauty that gleams in the late afternoon golden light, hung against the water stain on the wall."

One of my personal favorites was “Suspended City” by Raimundo Rubio.  This piece consisted of branches and computer chips all covered in crystallized salt.  The intersection of natural resources and technology is frosted over with the salt crystals, creating a city of overwhelming beauty that gleams in the late afternoon golden light, hung against the water stain on the wall.  Like a dystopia touched by a fairy enchantment, this work is otherworldly and very simply, breathtakingly beautiful.

While the techniques and stories behind the works displayed in Colonel Row differ, they are united by the fact that they are highly site-specific pieces.  In a museum, the label ‘site specific’ might be a space-related term to consider in terms of humidity, wall angles and lighting.  But especially here, the work is strongly informed by the location.  Governors’ Island is the chief inspiration in The Sixth Borough, so the themes that unravel from the painter and sculptor minds are inevitably linked: technology encounters steadily encroaching nature; war draws straight parallel lines through the centuries; children disappear as they turn into adults.  These subjects are remembered and reinvented in the four historical houses, given form and fantasy by contemporary artists.

Ultimately, the Big Idea behind this exhibit is to explore the alternate reality, the disorientation that one feels upon arriving at Governors’ Island.  As a New Yorker, I experienced a bit of nausea, caused slightly by the ferry but mostly by my surroundings- it is strange to imagine that a whole isle of historic houses and grassy fields exists beyond the skyscrapers and busy streets.  But No Longer Empty brings Governors’ Island to the foreground, transforming it into the sixth borough as an art-filled pocket of space and distorted time.

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The most unusual part of this whole experience is the realization that there are things in this world still indescribable and yet oddly understandable.  There are no longer any limits to what art can show us.

In the thirteenth solo artists exhibition on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden the famous duo Doug and Mike Starn have teamed up with the legendary Metropolitan Museum of Art to create, yet again, another piece of art that cannot be categorized, as usual.  It is a mix of performance, sculpture, and architecture.

Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop, consisting of 5,000 interlocking 30 and 40 foot‐long fresh‐cut bamboo poles lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope, will continue to be constructed throughout the duration of the exhibit and will in the end take the form of a monumental cresting wave.  The first phase of the structure measuring about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high was completed by opening day, April 27.

Big Bambú is on view at the Met from April 27–October 31, 2010 (weather permitting)

The artists and rock climbers are continuing to build up the eastern portion of the sculpture to an elevation of 50 feet.  An internal footpath artery system grows along with the structure, facilitating its progress.  The artists and a team of rock climbers will build it throughout it’s eight month life span.

Yet for all the talk of schedules and structure the piece is rooted in the rather timeless phenomenon of change and evolution.  It defies categorization as an art form because it suggests itself as a vast complex life form.  The artists’ fascination with organic systems has produced something that seemingly stands on it’s own and grows by itself.  This kind of ever changing presence looks like a sculpture and can be experienced like a performance.

Maybe what Big Bambú is trying to show us, as Nietzsche put it, is that the irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

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This August, five groups of Teen Reviewers and Critics (TRaC) ventured out into New York City to take in some culture.  After attending a Thursday performance, everyone wrote reviews, then reconvened the following Tuesday for a discussion and workshop.  Our work is published here in the first of a five part series featuring writing from the Summer TRaC!

Summer TRaC Session 1 visited an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art featuring turntable pioneer Christian Marclay.  Check out the excerpts and full reviews below….

“Christian Marclay’s “Festival” at the Whitney Museum of Art is an experiment of the ‘fusion of image and sound through collage, performance, installation, photography, sculpture, and video.’ In other terms, it is a smorgasbord of all things musical.” – Elizabeth Sherwood

Read ELIZABETHS’s full review.

“Along the walls, you see a single line of words, seemingly describing what you had just heard in the show, or were about to hear. […] those sentences tied everything in the room together.” – Kayla Somar

Read KAYLA’s full review.

“Viewers are encouraged to write something on the massive chalkboard that is covered in staff lines […] I learned that ‘Teresa ♥’s Julian,’ ‘Emma wuz here,’ […], and what was perhaps my favorite: a regretful sentiment somebody wrote about how they wish that they had taken piano lessons.” – Jane Handorff

Read JANE’s full review.

“Interactive art is what this is, most museums won’t let any one touch a thing but yet now we can draw on the wall.” – Kayla Vialva

Read KAYLA’s full review.

“[…] intriguing in theory, the piece is just an unsettling battle of wills […] On guitar, Mary Halverson strums random, disconnected chords after another, contending with Ikue Mori’s drum machine-style clips of shattering glass.” – Sharon Mizrahi

Read SHARON’s full review.

“At some points the speakers oozed out the sound of soothing rain, another reminder of the weather the sheet music was exposed to.  Accompanying the speakers was a guitar occasionally playing familiar tunes or chords and at other times seemingly haphazard notes.” – Kirsten Rischert

Read KIRSTEN’s full review.

“The dissonant tunes and complexed rhythms of this performance bring the most skilled listeners back to some other performances, such as Georges Asperghis’s latest production: Les Boulingrins.” – Victoire Bourhis

Read VICTOIRE’s full review.

“[…] certain combinations of sound and rhythm have the power to evoke such extreme responses in people. Music is at once less and more than physical. It is nourishing, like food, and yet invisible, like gas. Is music a fart?” – Phoebe Nir

Read PHOEBE’s full review.

“[…] sounds may include high shrills, popcorn sizzling, cork popping, water dripping, sawing, glass breaking, and everyday sounds of annoyance.” – Chui Yu Lau

Read CHUI YU’s full review.

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While I sat in the performance room of Christian Marclay‘s musical exhibit at the Whitney Museum and listened to his music being played, I thought I heard dripping water, a train, a UFO, trees rustling, and multiple cicadas.  Though I’m sure that others interpreted the music differently, it evoked many clear images in my head.  Despite the fact that I found the music to be even annoying at times, the performance really showed the relationship between what was heard and what was seen. The music had its ups and downs, much like the exhibit itself.

Before going in to the actual performance, I watched part of the two films playing in the performance room, though I didn’t realize that the themes of the films and of the music seemed to be quite similar.  One film was split into two screens, showing two separate films.  One screen would show a picture or movie scene, while the other would often display sheet music, which seemed to be playing out the scene that was pictured.  This shows how linked our ears and eyes are, as did the other film.  The second film showed movie scenes without sound, letting the viewer see how empty they are, and how when we process things that we see, sound plays a major role in what we are experiencing.

My favorite part of the exhibit wasn’t the music itself, or the films, but the chalkboard wall in the performance room.  Viewers are encouraged to write something on the massive chalkboard that is covered in staff lines (much like music paper used by composers).  From reading the wall, I learned that ‘Teresa ♥’s Julian,’ ‘Emma wuz here,’ another museum was advertising their own new exhibit, and what was perhaps my favorite: a regretful sentiment somebody wrote about how they wish that they had taken piano lessons.  Though all of these visual statements seem random, they were connected by the staff-lines on the chalk board, seemingly suggesting how music holds together the chaos and randomness of a very visual world.  This theme was present not only in the music, performance room, and films, but in the room next door.  It was full of items that would all seem random (picture a rack of clothes, bells, and even tissues…) had they not been covered in musical notes and other music-related symbols and pictures.  The room was tied together by a stream of words that seemed to describe the music that you either just heard or were about to go hear.  The words provided a constant string that held it all together, and it seemed as if the whole thing would have fallen apart had they not been there.

The last room of the small exhibit appeared to be an oasis in a museum of standing and walking around: it looked like a living room (complete with couches).  However, Marclay has the final word.  Just as you are starting to relax, music that could only be described as annoying and occasionally ‘painful unto thy ears’ starts to blast, prompting you to leave.  As you’re going home, you’ll be sure to notice the chatter of the people waiting for the subway train, and the roaring sound accompanying the train that passes by.

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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Music and noise are different things.  The Christian Marclay exhibit at the Whitney Museum explored that.  The sounds of ear piercing screeches and dripping water were both heard throughout the room.  Walking in and hearing the sounds of something unfamiliar as someone who dropping a glass becomes familiar.  This whole exhibit was about seeing sounds and interactive art.  A wall with music staffs that could be drawn upon in any which way one feels like.  Interactive art is what this is, most museums won’t let any one touch a thing but yet now we can draw on the wall.

Musical notes were all over the room in one part.  With words like “kaboom” and “boing” plastered on comic book strips.  Words like these are seen but translated in to our head as a sound.  In a way its word association.  The notes that were dripped over t-shirts, shoes, and even toilet paper gripped one from the time they saw it.   The different ways musical notes were all around us and we never notice.  How on a sweet and low packet there is a musical note right there but we would never realize.  Music is all around us just waiting to grip us like a spider web.

Black and white clips that would have the occasional scribble of color drawn on it that consumed your attention to try and figure out what all the clips meant and how they were intertwined with one another.  Then you have the Eureka I got it moment.  I know what this all means.  How sounds are coming from the dark and yet one doesn’t know how to interrupt it but its right in your face the whole time.

Once the performance started I didn’t know how to take it.  The rock and roll feel accompanied by outer space type of sound.  It was as if aliens and humans trying to communicate but just weren’t getting there.  Whimsical instruments that made you see what was being played while it happened.  The guitarist was well endowed in to what she was doing and even in the high tone or fast pace the sounds flowing through the speakers became she stayed focus.  It was music that would drive you crazy but you had to listen to see what happened next.  It left you drained and confused.  It put you in an imaginary world filled with sounds of the start of a rock band.  It was music against sound.  The music was played on the guitar while the sound was played through a laptop.  The difference between music and noise is embedded in to you and you begin to realize the differences.  This was an all around great experience that could quite possibly change your view of music.

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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You walk into the Whitney Museum of American Art, expecting to see just another art exhibition of an artist. You make your way to the elevator and start going up, not even thinking about what you’re about to see.  You step out of the elevator onto the second floor, and are thrust into the musical art world of Christian Marclay.  Christian Marclay’s art is highly unconventional and unique. In the past years, he has exhibited his work all over and pioneered turntablism (the use of records and turntables as musical instruments).

From the moment that you step into the exhibit, all types of musical art surround you.  To your left, there is a room that is full of musical clothing, records, and even tissues.  The message seems to be that music is not just something that you listen to, you can also read it, and create it.  Along the walls, you see a single line of words, seemingly describing what you had just heard in the show, or were about to hear.  Although it was only a single line of words, those sentences seemed to tie everything in the room together. Also on the walls were compound cartoon cut-outs.  These cartoons displayed onomatopoeia such as “Bang” and “Boom.”  But just seeing the sounds, in my opinion, is nothing compared to hearing them. In the room conjoined to this one, there is music playing.  The room is white with comfy couches and record displayed towards the back.  As soon as you sit down on the ostensibly comfortable couches, music starts to play. But not Top 40 music or even classical music.  The music being played is a mixture of screeching fiddles and other undesirable noises that are hard to put up with at times.

So instead of staying in this peculiar room, you exit into a large room with different sections.  In two of the sections, mini movies are being played, without sound.  These soundless movies really made me think about how we’d be affected if we didn’t have music or even sound.  Also in this room was a very big blackboard with many musical staffs.  On the blackboard, there were the writings of many different people saying things such as “There is always a strait of sun…somewhere” and “Today is my birthday!”   This part of the exhibit has a very distinctive style.  Instead of being told not to write on the very big musical staff on the wall, you are encouraged to do so.  In the far corner of the room stands a lonely piano daring somebody to go over and play it but warning them not to at the same time.  In this big room, even though music is not playing, it seems to be present nonetheless.

Soon, it is time for the short music show, Graffiti Composition.  In the late ‘90’s, thousands of blank sheet music were posted throughout Berlin.  Passerbies were encouraged to scribble on them with music, or whatever else they wanted to do.  The new, filled in sheet music were then photographed for musicians to use as inspiration, or music.

The concert starts and once again, the sounds heard are not pleasant.  It doesn’t seem as if anyone is enjoying them.  But in a strange way, this music is art.  What comes to mind when you hear a pitter-patter sound?  You may think of a toddler running across a wooden floor, or marbles falling on top of each other, or even water hitting the roof of a shed.  In this music show, every sound that I heard, I affiliated with a picture or memory in my mind.  Whether it was the wind chimes on the porch of my grandma’s house, or the sirens of the fire trucks that pass by my window every so often, or the static that I hear every time someone takes of the television every sound evoked an emotion and came together to create a twisted musical piece.

This style of exposition makes you feel as if you are a part of the art that is being displayed.  Christian Marclay illustrates the connection between sound, music, and art cleverly.  I left the Christian Marclay: Festival exhibit with a greater tolerance to strange sounds and an awareness of the noises around me.  The main message that I took away from this exhibit was: sounds are music in a sense, and music, without a doubt, is art.  So all we need to do is open our eyes and listen.

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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The Christian Marclay: Festival exhibit currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art is a multimedia performance of the artist’s “graphic scores” through sounds and images, but in fact, it seems more like a session of marriage counseling between two of the most uneasy partners in human history: music, and the mundane, insane, or just downright silly ways that humans try to codify it.

Truly, nowhere else does there exist such a bizarre disconnect between form and function. There is music, transcendent, untethered, that which “all art aspires to,” and then there is the way it’s written, all skinny lines and stick-figure shoes.  Compared to listening to a song, looking at sheet music is like staring at an eye chart at the optometrist.  Even written words, which so lack music’s juiciness, achieve their charming moments of visual onomatopoetry, the swoosh inherent in ‘swoosh,’ the hurt that can be found in its own hunched shoulders like a deflating balloon.

Marclay’s gallery is jam-packed with evidence of the estrangement: in a room off of the gallery filled with chic white couches, music plays while people look at a plasma television screen with the image of an empty horizontal bar being filled in to represent the passage of time.  Now they’re listening to shrieking fiddles, now, cool bossa nova, and yet the image is the same, that ubiquitous sideways sand timer that’s on everybody’s iPods.  This is how we look at music.

In another room, there is a comic strip depicting a man shouting in pain.  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH” he cries, the AAAs spanning three full panels.  And yet, all the vowels in the world couldn’t convey the man’s anguish as well as the simple sound of his yelp.  This is how we look at music.

Small black words run around the perimeter of the same room, seemingly excerpts from music reviews.  “With soft caresses, the guitar meows,” they say.  “Pointillist explosions of shattering sound.”  These words fall together like beat poems, expressive and interesting, and yet they no more evoke the true magic of music than a person can punch a rainbow.  This is how we write about music.

Then the performance element of the exhibit begins, a screechy half-hour long duet between a guitar and a MacBook.

The sounds are not pleasant, and nobody appears to be having any fun, least of all the young woman dourly plucking her instrument, but the piece is consistent with the rest of the exhibit and takes its message even further.

Isn’t it weird how music happens physically, how this violent tweaking evokes hopping frogs, how that one evokes a sunset?  Throughout the performance, I winced, I cringed, I clenched my jaw when subjected to the most grating high pitches.  If somebody had watched a silent video of the audience, they wouldn’t understand why people’s bodies were twitching in unison, because music is invisible, but so much more potent than the somber yellow bars that went up and down on the amp to indicate an increase or decrease in volume.

Not to be too dramatic, but I was reminded of the recent news story about how prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay were tortured by being forced to listen to Britney Spears nonstop.

The merits of Ms. Spears’s music aside, it’s interesting that certain combinations of sound and rhythm have the power to evoke such extreme responses in people.  Music is at once less and more than physical. It is nourishing, like food, and yet invisible, like gas. Is music a fart?

The question of what, precisely, music is has stumped philosophers for centuries, and Christian Marclay’s attempt to solve it through process of elimination doesn’t provide a satisfying answer.  Still, the exhibit has enough of a sense of humor about itself to have some moments of real wit.  It’s hard not to feel some warm fuzzies looking at the way the little stripes and golf clubs cover a pair of bowling shoes, or the sleeve of the Mostly Matzo LP.

It may be that music has no perfect facsimile, but that’s what makes it so marvelous.  Maybe all the signage acts just as it should. Maybe it’s just a sign that says ‘listen.’

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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Christian Marclay ‘s “Festival” at the Whitney Museum of Art is an experiment of the “fusion of image and sound through collage, performance, installation, photography, sculpture, and video.”  In other terms, it is a smorgasbord of all things musical.

In the first room, there are many objects related to music or with musical notes printed on them, like a hanger with clothing, a record collection, tin boxes, and “Sixty Four Bells and a Bow,” featuring bells from all over the world.  This room was well displayed and very satisfying to the musical-note-printed-paraphernalia-collector.

However, when you enter into the largest room, where there are two sets of movies showing and a blackboard of sheet music that fills its entire length, you really understand what Marclay’s ideas encompassed – audience involvement in music.

The chalkboard, the only physically interactive aspect of the exhibit, besides the room with the couch and loud music, was the highlight. It was entertaining to read what people wrote in chalk, and surprisingly, some people actually wrote musical notes.  Writing my own message on the board made me feel like I made my permanent mark in the exhibit, even if I could not demonstrate my nonexistent musical genius.

Marclay focuses on the way that music can be heard in every day activities.  Although it may not be physically heard, one might play music in ones head.  This is evident in the “Manga Scroll,” a series of pages from Japanese comic books that have onomatopoeic words, and in the two movies.  The movies have serene images, sometimes in black and white, of nature and of people, but one of them has sound and the other does not.  The silent movie was made that way in order to allow the audience to provide its own soundtrack.

A soundtrack was in fact provided for the audience at 4:00 p.m. in the large room when two women came out to play “Graffiti Composition,” a painful concert of sounds.  One woman played the guitar and the other played noises on her computer.

It was hard to picture what was expressed through the music, because the melodies did not fit well together.  The music was horribly loud and came from two speakers sporadically.  An introduction to the piece could have been appropriate, but no words were uttered by the musicians.

The musicians, May Halvorson and Iku Mori, were very focused on reading their music, or computer screen.  Together they created booms and crashes and other onomatopoeic sounds.

Upon closing ones eyes, one could try to understand what the music had to be.  In my case, it was obviously a mixture of: aliens arguing, birds chirping, water dripping, and crickets chirping.

The music switched from speaker to speaker, the woman banged hard on her guitar often, and the music would abruptly stop. For all of these reasons, one felt that one was surrounded by an alien invasion in a cricket-infested purgatory.

Perhaps the guitar would have sounded better by itself. Playing an actual song.

Out of all of the displays in the exhibit, the chalkboard with actual graffiti was the most memorable.  I realized the artist’s purpose and how important audience participation is in an exhibit or a concert.  If the exhibit only consisted of the display room and the large room with the chalkboard, I would have left satisfied. Instead, I couldn’t get that noise out of my head.

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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Following the footsteps of many modern works, Christian Marclay’s Festival is more of a novelty than actual art.  Festival, described by Marclay as a “fusion of image and sound,” is a dual showcase of visual and performance art.  The visual aspect of the exhibit features clothing, wrappers, record sleeves, and print media adorned with musical symbols; various artists are invited to musically interpret these items.

On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art until September 26, Festival is on the mediocre side of the museum art spectrum. While Festival is initially engaging, it is easily dismissible–Marclay appears to rely solely on unconventionality for meaning rather than real substance.

The most prominent of Marclay’s visual pieces is Ephemera, an extensive display of wrappers, packaging, and adverts marked with staff lines and musical notes.  While the compilation is certainly amusing to look at, it is essentially as banal as a stamp or trading card collection.  The performance-based piece Graffiti Composition is an aural adaptation of graffiti marks on posters of staff lines (these posters were placed in Berlin for passersby to freely mark). As a different musician leads each performance, each interpretation is different than the last—visitors are encouraged to return to hear multiple renditions.  Though intriguing in theory, the piece is just an unsettling battle of wills between a guitar and a laptop.  On guitar, Mary Halverson strums random, disconnected chords after another, contending with Ikue Mori’s drum machine-style clips of shattering glass.  Following the shock value-style of Ephemera, Graffiti Composition is haphazard in execution—it lacks harmony and direction, and borders on unlistenable.

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Procuring a “Festival” at the Whitney Museum of American Art is only a small feat for renowned artist and composer, Christian Marclay.  In the past thirty years he has exhibited his art worldwide, pioneered turntablism (the use of records and turntables as musical instruments), and worked with film, photography, sculpture, performance and video to brilliantly explore the connections between image and sound.

From the moment you step out of the elevator all types of art surround you commanding your attention.  The back wall displays an enormous chalkboard traced with musical staff lines and covered with markings made by museum visitors.  To your left, The Bell and the Glass video projection plays continually and to your right is a room displaying an assortment of collages, garments, photographs and more, some dating back to the 1990’s and each functioning as a musical score.

One of the most alluring exhibits within this room is the Graffiti Composition.  In 1996, thousands of blank sheet music were posted throughout Berlin.  The result varied from ripped or scribbled graffiti on the posters, to musical notations.  The altered sheets were then photographed producing a score of 150 images unbound images for musicians to select from and use in performance or as inspiration.

The short concert we heard, performed by Mary Halvorson and Ikue Mori, derived its inspiration and perhaps whole sections from aforementioned score.  My interpretation was that the sometimes harsh, electronic sounds coming from the speakers was triggered by the torn, graffiti-covered sheets reminding the musicians of the realities of urban life in Berlin, filled with loud disturbances.   At some points the speakers oozed out the sound of soothing rain, another reminder of the weather the sheet music was exposed to.  Accompanying the speakers was a guitar occasionally playing familiar tunes or chords and at other times seemingly haphazard notes.

Every element of the exhibit reminded me of a unifying message Marclay expertly ties together: music is about more than the artist showing off his talents, but rather the artist’s process of creation through his interaction with the community in ordinary life.  His choices to engage the audience break down the barriers of traditional art allowing us to connect to his work rather than simply view it.

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Check out this mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay:

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