subject: Swoon Shout It From The Rooftops By Emily Nathan [print this page] New Orleans is so full of music that its very houses sing, or so says the Brooklyn-based street artist Swoon. The former Deitch Gallery artist celebrated for sending populated boats made of city garbage down the Hudson and crashing the 54th Venice Biennial by raft, has now brought her bohemian magic to dry land, collaborating with some 25 artists and musicians to build river refuse into a ramshackle musical village on the banks of the Mississippi.
Titled The Music Box and on view in New Orleans artsy Bywater district from Oct. 22-Dec. 10, 2011, the sound laboratory resembles a shantytown of interconnected, tool-shed-sized structures. Made from scavenged local materials, each shack houses an experimental instrument, from an organ staircase to a rocking-chair harp to a voxmurum, whose pre-programmed sound pedals jut out from wooden paneling and conjure the whispers of neighbors heard through the wall.
The Music Box village is enclosed in a brick courtyard behind a jagged wooden fence, and it sits on the edge of a small amphitheatre like a whimsical theatrical set. Its shanties are a paragon of the citys shabby-eclectic, folk esthetic -- asymmetrical planks of bargeboard, dirty panes of glass, wood dappled in drips of paint and an array of delicious details, from a roof tiled in oyster shells to a spinning weathervane to a scalloped wooden overhang, like a gingerbread houses trim. Beyond the trendy appeal of its vintage esthetic -- rusty metal pipes, twine-wrapped wood, piles of stone and yellowing piano keys -- its jumbled construction evokes the youthful delight we once took in makeshift versions of adult things: drinking cups fashioned from rose petals, or swords from sticks.
In fact, its materials were mostly gathered from the site of a recently collapsed, late-18th-century Creole cottage that has been acquired for repurposing by local arts organization New Orleans Airlift, which sponsored the project and invited Swoon to The Crescent City as an artist-in-residence. She conceives of The Music Box as the prelude to her larger vision: a permanent, three-story interactive sound sculpture called Dithyrambalina, which she has already designed for construction in the cottages original location. When completed, the musical house will serve the community as an alternative arts space, and, later, as Airlifts headquarters.
In the meantime, the Box serves as an experimental platform for Swoons artists and musicians to develop the instrumentation they will eventually build into Dithyrambalinas walls, ceilings and floorboards -- like its plumbing and electrical systems. When not in use, it is open to the exploration of the public every weekend through the winter, a fantasy playground for grownups.
Things kicked off on opening night, Oct. 22, 2011, with a live improvisational performance conducted by local noise hero Quintron, elegantly robed in a three-piece suit. As the clock struck 8:30 pm, he stepped into the light and raised his batons -- two double-sided paddles like on/off buttons, yellow for go and black for stop. The audience hushed, and for the next 30 minutes, his tall, lanky figure moved gracefully among the shacks, conducting his symphony of eight musicians and their musical dwellings with gestures of his paddles.
