THE CROSSING
PROJECT INFO
INSTALLATION- KINETIC SCULPTURE CONCEPT
INTENT
Great ideas are as easily celebrated as they are taken for granted and forgotten.
The constitutional framing of the law as a means to achieve the greatest possible liberty of all rather than the absolute power of a few is one of these truly great ideas of our time.
The Crossing translates this notion into a spatial dialog between a large kinetic sculpture and its visitors. As they enter a monumental, slowly moving stage set at the intersection of two paths, people’s movements across the space become restricted or allowed. Their right of passage is granted or denied by the changing configurations of the sculpture. The constant recalibration of their individual right in relation to the rights of others becomes an opportunity to reflect on the very nature of laws and their propensity to foster or preclude a sense of unity among people.
CONCEPT
The way we go about our lives, the paths we choose to follow, intersect inevitably with the trajectories of others. Each of these intersections is an encounter, a moment of human conflict or connection. What we do in these moments -with and to each other- defines us individually and as a society.
The Crossing is a place at the intersection of two such paths. The terrain gently rises to an area where they cross orthogonally in a square. Four tall pivoting doors mark the corners of this theatrical stage and form a portal for anyone traveling in either direction on one of the two crossing paths.
These four doors are conceived to never entirely open the full width of one path without walling off the other. Like four giant hands of a clock, they cycle through a full rotation at an imperceptibly slow pace. Their changing position in relation to each other creates a variety of spatial configurations that frame the space of the visitors’ encounters with each other, allowing or blocking their motion along each path.
The Crossing can be interpreted as a spatial translation of the laws we invent to govern human encounters. As a door opens one way while closing another it confronts one person’s freedom to advance with another’s obligation to concede. By nature, any absolute monopoly of rights and freedoms on one side leads to tyranny on the other. Granting an absolute right of passage on one path revokes it on the other. The physical experience of this dilemma allows visitors of The Crossing to “feel” that equal freedom requires justice: the elaboration, acceptance and respect of a well-calibrated framework of laws that unites its adherents and mediates their trust in each other.
The constant movement of The Crossing’s four doors signals that none of their positions is definitive. It suggests that the choice between unity and division, inclusion and exclusion, freedom and oppression, is ours to make every time. Our true freedom is a freedom of choice in relation to each other.
