HALLOWEEN NEXT – MIDNIGHT DECOMPOSURE

On October 31^st, a favorite evening, the Santozeum will be de-installing and re-installing exhibits for end-season.  In the middle of the stage change, some people will be chatting around a table.  One of them, Petros Babasikas of Drifting City Studio, Athens will be creating an installation on the Santozeum grounds.  His practice installed its latest at London’s Victoria Park, commissioned by the Mayor of London.

www.driftingcity.com/drip

“Drifting City announces the launch of ‘Drip/ There is an Island,’ a public space installation at Victoria Park London. The project was commissioned by the Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority as part of the “Wonder: Incredible Installations” summer 2012 programme, running parallel to the Olympic Games.

‘Drip’ is a large steel sculpture that contains an intricate vertical garden. Inside it, two separate hydraulic systems create water movement that nourishes 12 plants and slowly dissolves a canopy of salt into 14 stalactites. Dripping down and growing up, the two compete against each other in time: the sculpture grows as its content breaks down. Atmosphere and gravity transform it, within months, into a steel, organic and inorganic hybrid.

The project works like an urban hourglass, responding to and creating its own weather, growing rapidly when it rains. It also reconfigures, against the public gaze and movement, the basic elements of an Island: isolation, loom, a clear perimeter, an inaccessible hinterland, the ebb, flow and spray of salt and fresh water, and the shadow of beach trees.

‘Drip/ There is an Island’ was designed by Drifting City in Athens and Los Angeles, constructed by Future Constructions Athens and a team of engineers, workers and artisans in Glyfada and Menidi, Greece, transported to and reassembled in Hackney, London by a British team. It will return to Greece after the Games to be exhibited in other venues locally and internationally.”  Drifting City Press Release

Petros’ work will un-coat the Santozeum, each of its seven at a time, per a common dream of his drifting universe and an early imagining of the Santozeum project.  It’s wonderful to have an old friend creating in the fold.