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.

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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.