Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – A pair of interactive art installations in Brooklyn speak potently to our times: NEGATIVE LIBERTY / POSITIVE LIBERTY & ARRIVALS + DEPARTURES

• By drediman
• April 12, 2021
• No Comments

This weekend, I trekked to Brooklyn to experience a pair of interactive, socially-distanced art installations – courtesy of the american vicarious and the Brooklyn Academy of Music – that speak potently to our times. Once again, actor-less but in-person experiences like these proved to be good alternatives for those not quite ready for full-on theatrical experiences (which are starting to spring up) yet are tired of streaming content alone at home.

NEGATIVE LIBERTY / POSITIVE LIBERTY
the american vicarious / The Invisible Dog
On view through April 18

One of the most unique pieces of theater to have come out of the pandemic was last fall’s Static Apnea, a collaboration between the american vicarious and The Invisible Dog. The brainchild of Christopher McElroen (the founding artistic director of the american vicarious), the work teetered between performance and art installation, creating a tense and immersive experience that has stayed with me. This spring, in what seems to be a direct response to BLM, Mr. McElroen has once again teamed up with the adventurous Brooklyn gallery to present another “performance installation” for one entitled Negative Liberty / Positive Liberty (RECOMMENDED). The work is inspired by Isaiah Berlin’s 1958 lecture “Two Concepts of Liberty: Negative & Positive”, which explores the idea of using the rhetoric of liberty as a tool for repression. The experience involves entering an enclosed box-like structure where you encounter a hologram of a woman (actress Sarah Ellen Stephens), who robotically expounds the concepts “negative liberty” vs. “positive liberty”. Although the 8-minute installation doesn’t use any live actors – like Static Apnea did – the work nonetheless feels viscerally theatrical, establishing a claustrophobic, strikingly-lit environment that’s jarringly disorienting and immersive. At one point in the experience, the viewer is invited to partake in a karaoke performance of Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” (!), as if stylistically acknowledging the stark contrast between the two concepts of liberty (or between rhetoric and the real deal).

ARRIVALS + DEPARTURES
YARA + DAVINA / Brooklyn Academy of Music
Through April 11

This past weekend, I also had the opportunity to catch the final days of Yara El-Sherbini and Davina Drummond’s Arrivals + Departures (RECOMMENDED). The duo of “YARA + DAVINA” are so-called social artists from Britain who specialize in site-specific works that creatively reference popular culture to induce a response in viewers. For the past month, their public art installation Arrivals + Departures – one of a number of safe outdoor offerings of BAM’s truncated but ingeniously modified spring season – has been on display at Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn. Essentially, the work is comprised of two train station (or airport?) arrivals and departures boards on which the names of people and corresponding dates are displayed. The names and dates that you see on the boards have been provided by the public on an ongoing basis as a way to commemorate the births and deaths of loved ones that have transpired, both recent and farther in the past. The metaphor is a powerful one, especially when witnessing new names appear on either board, which makes the events acutely concrete and specific. Indeed, Arrivals + Departures seems especially potent now, given the elevated loss of lives through the Covid-19. By erecting an interactive monument that’s conceptually accessible and accessible to all, YARA + DAVINA have given the city a much-needed physical space for the community to reflect on the transience of human existence.