Letting Space on the Terrace

From the pub­lic art pro­gramme which brought you Kim Paton’s Free Store and Tao Wells’ The Beneficiary’s Office (which both caused sig­nif­i­cant nation­al media inter­est and debate) I’d like to present to you: Col­in Hod­son’s The Mar­ket Tes­ta­ment.

An entire office build­ing on Welling­ton City’s The Ter­race is to be turned into a work of art: the vacant floors of an office build­ing will be occu­pied with its light­ing con­trolled via a live data feed from the stock mar­ket. The work will oper­ate at night for two weeks from Mon­day 11 April.

Hod­son says his art­work high­lights the degree to which our lives are deter­mined by a com­plex of eco­nom­ic sys­tems that, to a large part, are run­ning beyond our com­pre­hen­sion and con­trol:

Many of us look from the out­side at these build­ings — mon­u­ments to the bank­ing and finance indus­tries — and feel exclud­ed from the cap­i­tal­ist project that we were told her­ald­ed growth. With­in their archi­tec­ture we still see the echo of that opti­mism, car­ry­ing on with­out us, regard­less. There may be no phys­i­cal agen­cies on the unoc­cu­pied floors of these build­ings, but in the flick­er­ing sequence of lights that mark occu­pa­tion and util­i­ties there’s a code still gen­er­at­ing itself.

The work also includes a live web­cam feed — here’s the URL.

Welling­ton CBD office vacan­cy rates are pre­dict­ed to keep ris­ing and reach 15% by 2013.  Says cura­tor Mark Amery:

We need to engage in cre­ative solu­tions for the future mixed use of these build­ings to ensure a vibrant future for the city. Col­in Hodson’s work could act as a con­ver­sa­tion starter.

The open­ing event (Face­book) will take place at 6.30 pm on the top floor of the almost-vacant office tow­er — which Col­in has lit from the inside out — at 139 The Ter­race, Welling­ton.  Owing to the time of year and so forth it may be dark in patch­es, so if pos­si­ble bring a torch.

—

The brain-child of Mark Amery and Sophie Jer­ram, Let­ting Space brings artists and prop­er­ty own­ers togeth­er to explore cre­ative ideas for urban renew­al and growth. It com­mis­sions tem­po­rary art works from lead­ing New Zealand con­tem­po­rary artists for vacant com­mer­cial CBD spaces. The pro­gramme was respon­si­ble for pub­lic art projects in Welling­ton in 2010 by Wells and Paton (above), as well as Bron­wyn Hol­loway-Smith and Eve Arm­strong. Let­ting Space pub­lic art projects are part­ner­ships between artists and cura­tors and prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and man­agers; the prop­er­ty part­ner for The Mar­ket Tes­ta­ment project is Prime Prop­er­ty.