Queens Tribune

Socrates Sculpture Park introduced the 2005 edition of Float, a biennial series taking place in the park on Saturdays and Sundays in August.

This year, Float continues to address the environment of the park, enabling participating artists to test the limits of performative and site-specific practice through a variety of media and formats. Float presents a new selection of temporary artworks that will be installed, performed, activated, and screened throughout the Park on weekends Aug. 13-28.

Float includes artworks by Soledad Arias, Kabir Carter, Monika Goetz, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Ryan Humphrey, Akiko Ichikawa, Claudia Joskowicz, Trong G. Nguyen, Michelle Rosenberg, Chrysanne Stathacos, vydavy sindikat, and Douglas Weathersby.

Projects by Arias, Joskowicz, and sindikat use collective narratives as their subject matter. On Aug. 13 and 14 sindikat (a Brooklyn-based group experiment) will hold participatory public gatherings in the park, examining how notions of public and community are spontaneously formed. Joskowicz continues her ongoing Two-Second Love Stories, creating and distributing fotonovela t-shirts based on imagery and dialogue found within and around the park.

Arias’ who what where is a text-based installation that poetically questions social and political agency.

Ichikawa and Stathacos present performative works that underscore the complexity of cultural translation.
Stathacos will install a photographic piece entitled On Nature depicting global actions on nature, which invites visitors to contribute materials in gestures of wishing. Ichikawa’s performance involves producing customized logos that translate cliché touristic and consumer texts onto giveaway t-shirts (like “My friends went to Vegas and all I got was this lousy shirt”) in kanji and katakana characters.

Goetz, Humphrey, and Nguyen respond to the physical and architectural landscape of site, through installation, performance, and intervention. Goetz deals with the waterfront’s changeability by proposing a series of glaciers that refuse to melt. Humphrey approaches the surface of the park as the launch for a series of BMX bike performances. Nguyen inserts a temporary architectural floor plan that will disappear over the course of the series, momentarily overlaying an alternate use in the park’s footprint.

Making reference to the park’s previous function as a dumpsite, Gschwandtner and Weathersby create works using material excess. Weathersby will demonstrate his Environmental Services on the first weekend of the series, cleaning an area of his choosing within the park, while offering promotional giveaways. On all three weekends Gschwandtner will make available a Dumpster full of found film, video, and other footage that the public is invited to assemble into films and videos for evening screenings on the 20th and 27th.

Investigating the soundscape of the park, Carter and Rosenberg filter noise through varied technological means. Carter is producing a performance that captures and modulates available radio transmissions, while Rosenberg’s mobile listening devices isolate ambient noise found within Socrates.

Sara Reisman has curated this program. Performances and screenings will be held from 3-9 p.m. at Socrates Sculpture Park. Admission is free.

Socrates Sculpture Park is open 365 days a year from 10 a.m. to sunset and is located at the intersection of Broadway and Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City. For directions to the Park, go to www.socratessculpturepark.org.