Happy New Year!

Here's to 2013 being everything you hope for and more!

We said farewell to 2012 last week, and promptly got colds.  Boo.  But before we did, we went to a fantastic installation/show/happening/piece - event - by Ann Hamilton at the Park Avenue Armory called The Event of a Thread.  It is now officially, sadly, too late for my telling you about this to do any good whatsoever.  But I will declare my opinion that it was stunning and spectacular for the record.  

The enormous Armory space has been a stellar location for some fantastic visual art/performance/sound art pieces.  This one made full use of the building's vast rigging infrastructure to weave swing sets (yes, as in a few dozen giant... swings you get to sit on and swing) to harnesses which trigger sound elements (mainly bells; at least one accordion) while also pulling a wide swath of fabric draped across the center of the room.  And that's just the centerpiece: it also involved actors reading text into microphones which transmit to radios strewn about the rooms in paper bags (you're free to pick them up and take them on your travels through the Armory), a person writing reflections on the event (we weren't allowed near enough to see what was being written - presumably that will be made available at some point), a live singer at the end of each day performing a piece composed for the occasion by David Lang, which performance was recorded onto vinyl at the opposite end of the room, and then played to open the installation the next morning.  And after the song they released the homing pigeons from their cages to fly up to a perch above the recording device.

I didn't bring my camera, although it was a very photogenic event.  So I'll rely on a couple images from the internets, and try to let you know earlier next time.

Not sure, but I think this was taken by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan.  It's from this post.

And here's one I really like from barbaraelka.