It’s With Stones That We Rebuild

Text and Photography by Rob Kulisek

Rockaway! A free public arts festival to celebrate the ongoing recovery of the Rockaway peninsula and the reopening of Fort Tilden. Now through through September 1, 2014.

This summer, Fort Tilden’s 90-plus acres will provide the stage for Rockaway!, a show of new sculptures and site-specific installations by Patti Smith, Adrián Villar Rojas, and Janet Cardiff intended to celebrate the reopening of the popular beach destination after Hurricane Sandy. The artists have transformed the desolate patch of beach, known primarily for the ‘anything goes’ attitude of its day-trippers, into a sanctuary of reflection and poetic discovery.

The works, including Roja’s clay nests and Smith’s white linens suspended over a gilded bed frame are scattered throughout the historic military base. Visitors are given a map guiding them somewhat quixotically around Tilden’s vast acreage. Some of the pieces, like a series of Walt Whitman quotes on concrete blocks (a work by Smith) dot the landscape. Others fill entire buildings. The effect is a treasure hunt of sorts — with viewers encouraged to wander through (and wonder at) the natural space as they search out the works.

Although Smith’s name and involvement is one of the big draws, the highlights of the show are in Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet and the found objects that have been haphazardly arranged in some spaces. Cardiff’s sound installation, consisting of forty speakers each emitting a single voice, felt right at home in Tilden’s emptied chapel. Encircled by the angelic voices, visitors were forced to close their eyes and listen rather than whip out their smartphones.

But most exciting were slightly staged remnants of detritus displaced in the wake of Hurricane Sandy — objects that seemed haphazard but could have very well have been Duchampian interventions. Inside an old locomotive repair facility, for instance, a dangling hose hangs from the ceiling surrounded by chaotic assemblages of debris, and in the main courtyard a piece of driftwood carefully holds together a broken playground set. The statement is obvious: the place is changed by Sandy, but not defeated by it.

This idea is a palpable thread that ties the many disparate works together. Through artist’s metaphorical use of materials — stones and clay, mostly — the works at Rockaway! conjure a theme of hope and renewal. Perhaps Smith summed up the ideas for the show best. As she gave a tour of her work, she handed out a rock from her piece Font, a tub filled with small, white stones intended to be taken by patrons during their visit. “Take one for the rebuilding,” she said in her trademark cool, convincing tone. “Its with stones that we rebuild.”