Rashid Johnson: “Stage”
MoMA PS1 launches ‘PS1 Courtyard’ MoMA PS1 launches ‘PS1 Courtyard’: an experiment in creative ecologies, a year-long program to reimagine the uses of and access to the Museum’s outdoor courtyard, which is the interstitial space between the institution, its neighborhood, and the community. September 17, 2020 – Fall 2021.]]>
Source: MoMA PS1
Featuring a series of new initiatives, including a participatory installation by artist Rashid Johnson, a series of Thought Collectives that will test out creative and forward-thinking propositions for the use of public space, and a generative commissioning program to reanimate the Courtyard’s concrete walls, the program will recast one of the few plots of open land in Long Island City—the fastest growing residential neighborhood in the US and a site of rapid gentrification—as a place for experimentation and engagement with urban ecologies.
“Courtyards are, by their nature, meeting places between built environments.” said Kate Fowle, Director of PS1. “Through these initiatives, we are metaphorically breaking down the concrete walls and transforming the courtyard into a year-round laboratory for exploring the potential of equitable, sustainable, and creative interaction that can test out future thinking for new models of how and why we gather, and whose voices and narratives are amplified.
The centerpiece of the courtyard is Rashid Johnson’s Stage, a participatory installation and sound work that draws on the history of the microphone as a tool for protest and public oratory, while recalling the metonymic references to microphones in hip-hop lyrics from the 1980s to the present.
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