Andrea Mastrovito’s cutout installation brings paper creatures to life in “The Sixth Borough” exhibit on Governors Island (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
THE SIXTH BOROUGH
Governors Island, Colonels’ Row
Film series: July 16-18, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Exhibit continues Friday – Sunday through September 25
Admission: free
www.nolongerempty.com
www.govisland.com
sixth borough slideshow
While the city, state, and federal governments debate over what to do with Governors Island, we continue to be the beneficiaries, as the island has become a home away from home for lovers of art, music, history, nature, and just about everything else under the sun. This weekend, July 16-18, from 12 noon to 5:00 each afternoon, No Longer Empty, which has organized the excellent site-specific installation “The Sixth Borough” in the rooms along Colonels’ Row, will be presenting “Not a Place, an Outlook,” short films that examine the relationship between place and the mind, with works by Julieta Aranda, Javier Tellez, Erin Shirreff, Steve Roden, Luke Fowler, and others. (The series repeats August 13-15 and September 10-12 and 17-19.) Also as part of the “The Sixth Borough,” Mary Walling Blackburn continues to offer tutorials on the second floor of Building 408 dealing with “Radical Citizenship,” one-on-one discussions between a visitor and such tutors as Regine Basha and Amir El Saffar (“Tuning Baghdad,” July 17), TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone and Blackburn (“Our Bad Relationship: The Revolutionary + the Policeman,” September 4), and A. B. Huber (“Due Vigilance: One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, on Alert,” September 17). Among the other highlights of the exhibit are Adam Cvijanovic’s trompe l’oeil paintings that imagine worlds beyond the walls; Andrea Mastovito’s massive “The Island of Dr. Mastrovito,” consisting of thousands of animals cut out of some seven hundred books, lining the walls and floor of one room, while a video of playfully re-created famous horror scenes screens in another; Teresa Diehl’s haunting projected video “Return of Pleasure,” which casts shadows of memories across scrims in the middle of a room; and Trong G. Nguyen’s “Marcel Duchamp Versus Bobby Fischer,” a three-channel video installation depicting a chess match as seen from above. And as long as you’re on the island already, you might also want to check out Ivy Baldwin Dance on Friday at 2:00, the free Gone to Governors concert with Caribou and Phantogram on Water Taxi Beach on Friday at 7:00, Let’s Fly a Kite! at noon on Saturday, the Big Apple Circus Family Fun Fest and the Jazz Age Dance Party with Michael Arenella and the Dreamland Orchestra on Saturday and Sunday, the Figment Sculpture Garden (complete with mini-golf course), and other special events and activities, most of which are free.