Do you ever stop and wonder about the flow of your daily commute? Have you ever considered that you pass by the same people unknowingly and that you also go by unnoticed? Well, if your commute takes you by Brookfield Place, specifically its glass Pavilion on West Street, on Monday, October 26th through Wednesday, October 28th, don’t be alarmed by the 11 performance artists who will literally be taking notes on you.
Produced by More Art, Arts Brookfield will be presenting Ernesto Pujol’s 9-5. According to More Art, the performance is meant to “pay homage to all the city’s office workers.” Choreographed by Pujol, the performers, dressed in all white, will arrive at Brookfield Place by public transportation and silently drift to their partitions of the Pavilion window. They will then sit in silence and write about the various commuters passing by, “creating a literature of pedestrian life in the city.”
The glass window partitions are meant to reflect cubicles and the performance to reflect the repetitious and mundane nature of labor in the city. Seems a bit dreary but Pujol hopes 9-5 will open our eyes to our environments and the flow of humanity, especially in a place as busy as New York City. Pujol is a site-specific choreographer and 9-5 is not his first silent, durational, walking performance. As a student of the human condition, he hopes that his work will help create a collective consciousness.
Brookfield Place Pavilion is a logical spot for this site-specific performance. The complex is located just south of Tribeca along the Hudson River waterfront in downtown Manhattan. The Pavilion has already been home to several art exhibits, including the six swinging massive skirts and the 75,000 cans of food turned into art.
75,000 cans of food turned into art at the Brookfield Place Pavilion
For more on Arts Brookfield, click here. Next, read about a social network for New York City’s subway street performers and their audiences.Â