This past weekend, as part of The Festival Of Ideas For The New City held in conjunction with the New Museum offered Let Us Make Cake organized by Nuit Blanche New York and Light Harvest Studio, an evening of large-scale projections. The installations were throughout Soho & Nolita and were both public and displayed within interior space. The five projector, grandiose images that appeared on the facade of the NuMu were constructed in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and projection-mapped. The twenty minute loop included a roster of artists ranging from Vito Acconci to Olek.
Olek crochets and deposits her work within the realm of the public sphere. For this piece, inside the confines of the projection-mapped space, she deftly covers the exterior and/digital interior structural form of the building.
Post sunset, a crowd gathered inside a sectioned off part of the Bowery directly across from the museum. Necks bent at a ninety degree angle we all stared, almost completely in silence as the images danced in changing degrees of light over the structure.

The final piece of the loop was in part by video artist Ryan Uzilevsky. I became familiar with Ryan’s work after seeing one of his video’s included in The Decelerator which was on view this past March at Allan Nederpelt Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For Flash:Light, not only did he play a vital part in the installation and composition of the works but was also contributed to the loop. The top and above image in this post are stills from his piece. It was the most exciting and complex of the videos and seemed to channel a Renaissance ceiling brought to life via animation, as well as feature a bird-like creature similar to a Skeksis, from Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. This piece stood out from the others in that it added a 3-dimensional depth to the museum surface, and felt like a post-apocalyptic Modern Times. The work also reminded me of the stop-action animation of Danielle de Picciotto. Let Us Make Cake, was a celebration and a reminder that the urban landscape can also lend itself as a transformative stage.
The night of projections was a visual treat conforming to the architectural exteriors throughout Lower Manhattan. Even being a member of the New Museum, I initially felt a bit uninformed of the extent/purpose of the festival but am glad I was able to witness, in person, the feat that took video art which is normally restricted by scale and screen size into a realm that was visually accessible however physically unattainable.

The Festival Of Ideas For The New City, included lectures, panel discussions, street fairs and art exhibits from May 4th-8th, 2011.
Olek, will participate in Open Studios at the LMCC this coming weekend. Studios open to the public from May 13th-15th at Workspace Studio, 125 Maiden Lane, NY.
More soon!
xo