TRACING

Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NYC
2015

Change is a defining characteristic of Socrates Sculpture Park. It is a place continuously transformed by artwork that challenges our perception and relation to the space. In a sense, the park is a blank canvas for artists to experiment.

But there are also other processes at play, conditions that define this space that are not recorded, qualities and events that unfold continuously, accumulating in time. Most of these escape our attention either because they are always there or because they are fleeting, yet they belong to the park and create a different form of memory of the space.

We want to trace and make visible these transient conditions. We propose a device for registering the site and the people who use it, an object that changes in time as it collects these traces, revealing forces and processes intrinsic to the site but often unnoticed or unrecorded.

If the park usually serves as a ‘blank canvas’ for installations, TRACING offers the reverse: a canvas for the park to make itself present in a different way.