If you can get up to the Park Avenue Armory by August 8th, this is worth a stop. The art installation Hansen & Gretel by architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and artist/activist Ai Weiwei is at turns educational, fun, creepy, scary, beautiful, and unsettling.
We stayed for over an hour as drones flew overhead and the system tracked our movements over a grid covering the enormous Armory space. It was truly fun to play the system, see the beautiful ghostly images of you it projected as you moved, and to figure out how it worked.
In the middle of all this playful beauty, it eventually dawns on you: You cannot escape. The surveillance is everywhere. You cannot run or hide from it. And worse: you are part of it.
(That's me, above, making patterns with images of myself.]
(Shadows of a drone flying overhead.)
A second part of the installation provided further background on the history of surviellance and how it affects our lives. It was good to have this in a separate setting that reinforced and enriched the first experience without taking away from it.
It is rare for an artwork to be so entertaining and so immediately relevant at the same time. Definitely go if you have the chance.
All photos shot with a Fuji XT-20 with their 27mm f2.8 "pancake" lens.
All photos by Glenn Ricci / 