Overview
In a forest along the Hudson River, the future inhabitants progressively arrive at a real-estate development that is still under construction.
A new custom will be invented to celebrate the birth of this community.
We are in the year 01, this is the first anniversary of this new kind of village. A date will appear in the calendar and will be celebrated in subsequent years. Streamside Day is a story that will produce “an addition” of reality. The event takes the shape of an annual celebration and of a project for a community center that will be built in collaboration with the architect François Roche.
Pierre Huyghe: Streamside Day
11 September – 16 October 2004
Opening Reception: Saturday 11 September, 2004
In a forest along the Hudson River, the future inhabitants progressively arrive at a real-estate development that is still under construction.
A new custom will be invented to celebrate the birth of this community.
We are in the year 01, this is the first anniversary of this new kind of village. A date will appear in the calendar and will be celebrated in subsequent years. Streamside Day is a story that will produce “an addition” of reality. The event takes the shape of an annual celebration and of a project for a community center that will be built in collaboration with the architect François Roche.
The celebration is based on two themes: environment and migration. A parade followed by a welcoming speech by the mayor and the developer, a meal with an birthday cake, children dressed up as animals, who make houses out of cardboard boxes, a folk song- the hymn of the event- and a balloon of light in the shape of a moon, constitute the main rituals.
The tree and the cardboard box are the signs of this tradition, just as the stands for Halloween.
Draughtsmen, photographers, writers, a musician and an architect capture the event. A film is made, which will serve as a guideline for the yearly replaying of this new tradition, as if it were a score for the celebration.
The film is in two parts, the first shows the facts that lie at the source of the custom; the second is a re-interpretation of the same facts in the form of a celebration.
Part one begins as a wildlife documentary slowly turning into a fable. Pastorial images show animals re-inacting Bambi. Then, just as we see a fawn approaching the new development, we also follow a family migrating to their new home. The second part of the film shows the celebration.
This film has been created for Pierre Huyghe’s exhibition at the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, in November 2003.
For his exhibition at the Marian Goodman Gallery, the artist will create a new specific environment, which presentation will be different from the one shown at the Dia Center for the Arts.
