Tom Sachs takes visitors on a trip to Mars in the Park Avenue Armory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 17, $12, 12 noon – 7:00 pm (open till 9:00 on Fridays)
212-933-5812
www.armoryonpark.org
tomsachsmars.com
space program: mars slideshow
You don’t have to have grown up dreaming of becoming an astronaut to get a huge kick out of Tom Sachs’s immersive “Space Program: Mars” experience at the Park Avenue Armory. In September 2007, the New York native and his well-trained team traveled to the moon at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, but this time around he sets his sights much bigger, as Sachs and crew have filled the armory’s expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall with all the elements needed to journey to and explore the Red Planet. Curated by Creative Time’s Anne Pasternak and the armory’s Kristy Edmunds, “Space Program: Mars” begins with “Working to Code,” a series of short films (10 Bullets, Color, Love Letter to Plywood, Space Camp, How to Sweep, several made with Van Neistat) that detail Sachs’s bricolage DIY artistic process and hysterically precise rules (“When in doubt, leave it out! Or Die!”) that must be followed while toiling in the studio. You need to pay close attention to the very droll and funny movies if you want to pass the indoctrination test that is the only way to gain entrance to the life-size Lunar Excursion Module. (If you want a head start, you can check out all of the films in advance here.) And you’re going to want to get into the LEM, which is loaded with fascinating pieces that playfully evoke the real thing.
The Mission Control station makes sure everything is up and running in immersive space experience (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Working with NASA, Sachs and his crew of thirteen men and women painstakingly, and with a fabulous dose of tongue-in-cheek humor, re-created a multimedia Mission Control station, surveillance cameras, refrigeration units (including the Vader Fridge in the shape of the evil Death Lord), a miniature launch pad and docking target, a Mars Excursion Roving Vehicle, helmets and space suits, an ID station, an Incinolet, a Mobile Quarantine Facility inside a 1972 Winnebago, a cooking area, a clean air room, and other items necessary for achieving and surviving intergalactic travel, all put together with wood, metal, foam core, glue, nails, and other found materials ― resulting in a number of essential parts that actually work. NASA might have canceled the space shuttle program, but Sachs is reaffirming the continuing need for manned missions ― while also displaying his unique and endearing artistic sensibilities. And don’t miss the Museum of the Moon in the Veterans Room out in the hallway, where you can delve into the previous moon mission. The installation is up through June 17 and features several special activities. On June 7, Sachs and his team will conduct live demonstrations of the program’s flight plan. From June 9 through 16, Sachs and his Grummans will be holding mini-demonstrations, including a rescue mission, daily at 1:00 and 3:00, along with a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bicycle race scheduled for 6:00 every evening. On June 9-10 at 10:00 am, children ages five to twelve and their parents or guardians can take part in the interactive workshop “Life on Mars: Imagining the Incredible” with members of the Armory Artists Corps. On June 16, you can have “Breakfast with Mars Scientists,” as Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists Gregg Vane, Kevin Hand, and Tommaso Rivellini will join Sachs and moderator Lawrence Weschler for an in-depth conversation. The grand finale takes off immediately following, as Sachs and company will lead a real-time flight-plan endurance demonstration that runs until around midnight, with visitors allowed to come and go as they please, although you’ll have to get back in line for reentry.
One of the most influential documentaries ever made, Grey Gardens looks at the bizarre lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, in their dilapidated home in East Hampton. The elder Edie was the sister of Jackie Onassis’s father, so it was hard for the American public to believe that in the mid-1970s, relatives of Jackie O’s were living in such squalor. Little Edie bandies about in odd clothing, singing and dancing, believing that she can still resurrect her once-promising career as an entertainer. Meanwhile, her elderly mother cracks wise at her daughter while also remembering her own long-gone days as a singer. The women seem to be caught up in a world all their own, far from reality, but filmmakers Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, and Ellen Hovde don’t judge them in any way; they just let them be as the women greet guests and grumble about whatever they can. Selected for the New York and Cannes Film Festivals, Grey Gardens, which has also been turned into a fiction film and a Broadway musical, will be screening June 9 at 7:30 at the Maysles Institute as part of STAUNCH! A Grey Gardens Celebration IV, which runs June 8-10 and focuses this year on Jerry Torre, the Marble Faun from the original film. The weekend festival includes the world-premiere screening of Steve Pelizza and Jason Hay’s new documentary, The Marble Faun of Grey Gardens, on Friday at 7:30, followed by Q&A and reception with Torre, Albert Maysles, Pelizza, and Hay. The Maysles brothers’ 2006 sequel, The Beales of Grey Gardens, will be shown on Sunday at 7:30.
