Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron & Ai Weiwei: Hansel & Gretel
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"Hansel & Gretel is the latest work in the complex and exceptionally fruitful collaboration between Pritzker Prize winning Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron (architects for the Armory’s renovation) and the Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei. [...]
Hansel & Gretel brings together their combined interests in the psychological impact of architecture and the politics of public space; creating a playful, strange and eventually eerie environment with different layers of reality revealed to the visitors first in the Drill Hall and then in the Head House of the Park Armory. [...]
Hansel & Gretel is, [...] a dystopian forest of projected light where the floor rises up, as if lifted by an invisible force, and visitors are tracked by infrared cameras and surveyed by overhead drones as they systematically capture the parkgoers' data and movements. Here the breadcrumbs of the famous Hansel and Gretel fairy tale are not eaten by birds but rather digital crumbs are gathered and stored, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's poignant, 1953 science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, where an omniscient state surveils its citizens from the skies.
Entering from a small street-level doorway on Lexington Avenue through a long darkening tunnel, the visitor experiences both psychological menace and exhilarating wonder upon exiting into the expansive landscape of the dimmed Drill Hall, animated by interactive projections mapping the visitor's every move. Utilizing state-of-the-art surveillance technology, the installation is both an enticingly playful and unnerving experience of what it means to be constantly watched, of public space without anonymity. Only upon leaving the Drill Hall and entering the hallways of the historic Head House, does the visitor discover through a continuation of the installation the extent of what has been seen and captured. An extensive digital library of surveillance histories and technologies is available for further research.
In an age of constant scrutiny and data storage beyond the knowledge and control of ordinary citizens, Hansel & Gretel is perhaps less fantastical and more menacing than it may at first appear."
Hansel & Gretel brings together their combined interests in the psychological impact of architecture and the politics of public space; creating a playful, strange and eventually eerie environment with different layers of reality revealed to the visitors first in the Drill Hall and then in the Head House of the Park Armory. [...]
Hansel & Gretel is, [...] a dystopian forest of projected light where the floor rises up, as if lifted by an invisible force, and visitors are tracked by infrared cameras and surveyed by overhead drones as they systematically capture the parkgoers' data and movements. Here the breadcrumbs of the famous Hansel and Gretel fairy tale are not eaten by birds but rather digital crumbs are gathered and stored, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's poignant, 1953 science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, where an omniscient state surveils its citizens from the skies.
Entering from a small street-level doorway on Lexington Avenue through a long darkening tunnel, the visitor experiences both psychological menace and exhilarating wonder upon exiting into the expansive landscape of the dimmed Drill Hall, animated by interactive projections mapping the visitor's every move. Utilizing state-of-the-art surveillance technology, the installation is both an enticingly playful and unnerving experience of what it means to be constantly watched, of public space without anonymity. Only upon leaving the Drill Hall and entering the hallways of the historic Head House, does the visitor discover through a continuation of the installation the extent of what has been seen and captured. An extensive digital library of surveillance histories and technologies is available for further research.
In an age of constant scrutiny and data storage beyond the knowledge and control of ordinary citizens, Hansel & Gretel is perhaps less fantastical and more menacing than it may at first appear."
Tom Eccles and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Curators
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