Sarah Sze in "Balance" - Season 6 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[SARAH SZE ] This is a project I'm working on
for the High Line.

It was scheduled to be demolitioned.

People in the neighborhood ended up suing
the city to keep it and make it a park.

I really like this idea that natural wildlife

survives in this intense metropolis.

They didn't change the space that much.

They really just framed the wildlife

that grew there naturally over the years.

The piece that I conceived was a kind of habitat.

You have all of these birds, butterflies,
insects there,

and I wanted to make a location

where you would observe them on the High Line.

I did tons of research.

The place that I really liked working with

is the Cornell Ornithology Lab.

They do these incredible urban wildlife projects,

and they were really helpful

to talk about how this would work

and what would come to it, what might not
come to it.

They're really trying to figure out

how to get someone to look and observe for
ten minutes,

and they had said, you know, "Ten minutes
of observation

is an incredibly long time for a person,"

and this idea of slowing down and really observing,

I think it's a really interesting idea
also for visual art.

We're dealing with nature.

We don't know what's gonna happen.

Will the birds nest there, or will they not?

Let's say nothing happens.

It needed to be interesting as a sculpture.

The thing that made me interested in the piece
as a sculpture was this idea

that I'm gonna put the sculpture in a location
where you have to walk through it.

The walk itself becomes like a negative space
in the sculpture and that you have this

this very dynamic experience of it,

and that you see it from far away,

and then in perspective, it grows,

and then you actually are in the interior
of it,

and then you exit.

I think the high line is very beautifully
designed.

There are all these different areas
where you can stop and look, and it frames the city.

- And I was thinking it should be metal
like it's like a little it's almost like a petri dish.

This is a one-to-one scale model
of what I'll have fabricated.

I'd like to have the pieces feel
as if they're put together

Intuitively by hand in the moment,

So it was important to build something in
the studio

where I could start feeling, "This needs to
be more dense,

the size need to grow," and play around,

have the idea of play and flexibility in the
making.

One thing that was interesting about this
project for me

was that it was very hard to draw.

I did all of these different versions of this
idea

of being split down the center,

to figure out in space how this would work

because the promenade cuts the piece in half,

and this is the one that I chose,

partially because it has

this spiraling up that's surprising.

There's a ball that actually fits.

You can use this.

The negative space is actually round,

and you don't really realize it until you
get into it,

so it was built around a ball.

This is a really simple jig to actually figure
out

a very complex equation,
which is how does how does this neg--

If we want to carve out a ball, how do you
do it?

So this is just this is just the radius,

but it's the radius at any angle.

There is a center of the piece, kind of a Palladian
idea.

Even if you don't consciously realize you're
in

you're in a negative space of a ball,

and it has this kind of sense of being surrounded.

Portable planetarium was a piece I did

that actually was the orb,

and it was scaled very much to this idea

that you saw it as an orb,

and as you got closer and closer,

you moved in, and you were surrounded,

so you went from seeing it as an exterior

to being in its interior.

I'll photograph this piece over and over.

One of the ideas I had about photography

in relationship to the sculpture

was that the photographs really
become the memory of the piece.

I'm trying not to just document them

but to see what I can do in a photograph

that tells us something different

or emphasizes what's sort of essential about
the piece.

This piece is playing with one-point perspective

to represent, to trick our eyes into seeing
deep space,

so it's kind of absurd

to actually use that trick in real space,

but then it's interesting to photograph,

then flatten it out again.

For me, it becomes more like a Russian Constructivist
drawing

or a Futurist painting

In that, it's describing speed and movement

but entirely on a flat, still plane.

It's also funny because these almost become

computer images when they're flattened out.

They're so crisp, right?

Because they're so exactly in perspective,
actually.

[ grinder buzzes ]

[ welding torch crackling ]

There's this kind of scaffolding

that's gonna be the base of the piece.

Then there are these elements

that each have a different function,

there's water, housing, and food,

and there are these different locations,

and they're based partially aesthetically

and partially on research and practical need

for how this might work.

Originally, I built these strings

as a jig to measure.

Right now, all of these boxes aligned

should be parallel on the sides to these strings.

All of the fronts and the backs

should be parallel to the blue tape.

After I built it, I thought, "I like this
language."

You feel the actual thinking process

of trying to solve a problem.

This string system was, in and of itself,

aesthetically very interesting,

So then this is gonna become part of the piece.

I was thinking it should be metal.

- Swivel down

- These clamps may be completely decorative.

They may not be doing anything,

but they signify a kind of flexibility.

- To make the right angle.

I mean, the only problem is, this is gonna-

[ grinder buzzes ]

[ drill whirring ]

Scale is crucial when you're working outdoors,

especially when you're in Manhattan.

The spectacle of space, of scale, of information

is so high that the size is crucial.

I'm interested to take a public piece

and have it feel intimate,

and then when you get there,

you feel slightly embraced by the piece itself,

slightly nested, which plays on the idea of
the habitat.

I'm always thinking about how the frame can
bleed out

into the location.

One of the ideas in this piece that even though
it's outdoors,

it still has this quality that it's mutable,

changeable, that you could come back in a
week,

and it would be configured differently.

- This is correct, and that's correct,

and that's correct for what I have.

[ power tools whirring ]

I studied architecture and painting,

so I came to sculpture from those disciplines.

I'm always thinking,

"What can you do in a sculpture that you can't
do in a drawing?

What can you do in a building that you can't
do in a print?"

My father is an architect, so I grew up around

models, plans, looking at construction sites,

and also with his eye of just always talking

about buildings and cities.

- That looks good.

Yeah, that looks good.
That one looks right.

This one looks wrong, but, I mean,
That's the one that I made up, so...

[ drill whirring ]

Yeah, 'cause it that creates, like, a...
[ imitates ticking ]

A rhythm from there to there to there. It's good.

[ power tools whirring ]

My whole body of work

has this kind of flexible, mutable quality.

It has the rawness of a studio or the rawness
of a laboratory

where things could happen or things could
fall apart.

I think about the first view of a piece

being like the first line in a novel.

When you leave, what's the last part of the novel?

Where do you maintain your viewer's interest?

Where do you challenge them?

Where's the catharsis?

So that it is really a kind of narrative story

of movement through space.

I talk about the idea of choreographed experience

of the viewer through the space.

You become aware of your body in relation
to the work.

One of the ideas from the very beginning

in terms of the materials I use was accessibility.

A lot of the materials

were things that you could get at a dollar
store.

They're very generic.

The cultural value, the monetary value

would be very low,

and then put them in a location

where that became very high.

So the shifts in scale were really interesting
to me,

literally, in terms of space,

but also in terms of the profound and the
mundane,

the fleeting and the permanent,

a piece that's always teetering.

Tokyo was a very hard piece to photograph, film.

It's--you have to see it in person, really.

Some of my work is really about

using spaces that go unnoticed or unoccupied.

In a museum that's designed to see work,

to then put it in a place

like the ventilation by the window

is kind of a nice opportunity.

I'd very much like the experience of viewing to be one of discovery,

that you don't walk in, something is presented,
and it's framed, and it says,

"This is important; I'm art."

Often, with my work, it'll be in a corner,

or it'll be behind a stair.

It'll be near the freight elevator

so that your experience of first is,
"Whatis this?"

For me, most interesting art always has that
question in it.

It always questions what art is.

[ crowd chattering ]

- Are we trying to get the birds to come?

- I don't know. Let's ask.

- What are what are we doing here?

- Well, it's an artwork, but it's also a bird
feeder and a bird habitat.

- And birds eat oranges?

- Yes, orioles eat oranges.
Yep.

- Very interesting.

- Yep. And butterflies and bees too.

- It's a beautiful piece,

but I couldn't understand the fruit on it.

- Well, it's a sculpture work, but it's a bird
habitat.

- That's what I told you.
It's for the birds.

- For the birds.

[ both laugh ]

- Somebody's put their own seeds in,

'cause we don't use these seeds.

One of the things that happens

in my pieces that aren't--

have nothing to do with leaving things or
for birds,

but is that people, actually, in museums will
leave

objects from their pockets in the piece.

- And put more water.
- Yeah.

- And who's the artist?
Who did that?

- I'm the artist.

- Oh, you're the artist. Congratulations.

That's really beautiful.

C'est la dame actuelle qui tu fait.

- For this particular project,

I did a lot of research on birds and what
birds like

and what could different kind of things

could attract different kind of birds.

- Which birds are you attracting in here?

- Well, these ones are this is sort of the-

It's a very good basic bird seed just to use.

- Use for any bird?
- Yeah.

- And is it going to stay for a long time?
- One year. Yeah.

- One year. Wow.

- So that is doing an experiment at the same
time?

- Exactly.
- That's beautiful.

- That's exactly right.

It's an experiment.

- Thank you.
- Sure.

- Au revoir.

- Au revoir.

- Say tres bon.

- Tres bon.

- Merci.

- It looks like a birdhouse.

- Cute.

- Discovered a new use for oranges:

Wiping away bird poop.
[ laughs ]

Thank you.

Thank you.

How did I make it?
That's a good question.

So what I did was, I made the entire thing

in a model, so all of this I made in wood,

and these were all made in cardboard,

and we used we put we put all of these strings
here

as a guide so we could figure out
one-point perspective.

See all these?

They've been eating like crazy, and we've
been refilling them,

and they also come for the water too.

It'll be different every season.
- Cool.

- Thank you.

- You put oranges there, you'll get
Baltimore Orioles.

- Yeah, that's what we're that's what we're hoping.

I heard there's a whole bunch in Brooklyn,
but not--

They don't usually have them on the High Line,

But there's oranges, and there's apples.

- Oh.
- Also, it's just nice for color.

- Thanks.

- Oh, there's another one flying in.
There you go.

They're interested.
They ask questions.

It just blends in with the environment,

blends in with the pathway.

They're not questioning why it's there

in the same way that you often have with public art.

You know? That's good.
[ laughs ]

- I love bumblebees!

'Cause I saw them!

I love bumblebees!

♪ ♪

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