Whitney Museum of American Art
An audio dérive hosted by Carrie Mae Weems of Manhattan's West Side. Inspired by David Hammons' sculpture Days End, itself an homage to Gordon Matta-Clark's 1975 sculpture and architectural intervention.
From Late-night catcalls on Gansevoort St, the West Side piers pre-AIDS bacchanal, how the native peoples lived before colonization, the tectonics that created Manhattan, and how to install a 21,000 sq ft public artwork in the Hudson River. That was the idea: a sonic dérive of memories and histories, a radical blurring of time to conjure a greater understanding of place, and the Whitney Museum of American Art was all in.
Over a period of six months, in collaboration with the Whitney team, we built a rich archive of interviews with artists, historians, architects, store owners, editors, cultural thinkers, and former residents of what once was New York City’s Meatpacking District.
We gather these former denizens' and dilettantes' stories along with some rich sound design, careful editing, and thoughtfulness to the psychic leftovers and set out on a three-hour journey over five distinct yet intertwined episodes. Through all this, we offer a unique telling of the past, present, and future of place.
Client
Whitney Museum of American Art
Project
Artists Among Us
Services
Concept Development - Strategy - Creative Direction - Research - Naming - Production - Interviews - Sound Design - Post Production - Distribution Strategy
Voices
Glenn Ligon, Bill T. Jones, Adam Weinberg, Kellie Jones, Lucy Sante, Betsy Sussler, Jonathan Weinberg, Florent Morellet, Alan Michelson, Curtis Zunigha, John Jobaggy, Efrain Gonzalez, Catherine Seavitt, Tom Finkelpearl, Guy Nordenson, Jane Crawford, Andrew Berman, Jessamyn Fiore, Eric Sanderson, Randal Wilcox, Paul Gallay, Elegance Bratton, LaBeija, Pete Malinowski, Mabel O. Wilson, Ken Lum, An-My Lê. Hosted by Carrie Mae Weems
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Our Process
Stories, sound design, and the psychic leftovers of time and place.
Opportunity
It was a remarkable opportunity to develop the Whitney Museum of American Art first podcast series. The openness of the team to allow us to create rich non-linear storytelling was profound and a testament to a belief in treating their audience as intelligent humans.
Insight
This part of New York City has been a caldera of artistic, cultural, and creative activity for generations, excavating this psychic terrain reveals the radical nature of art and its practitioners. These Artists Among Us reveal and reverberate with the cultural tectonics that we sit upon.
Outcome
The outcome for us was evidencing new potential for cultural institutions media production, and storytelling. The podcast series has become an evergreen homage to the area and its people, never forgetting where its building stands or the cultural heritage that it represents.
