Lincoln Center has been working on another fresh installation for Josie Robertson Plaza. From “The Green” during the summer of 2021, which gave people a fun new way to share space outside amidst the pandemic, to “The Oasis” circa summer 2022, which brought people together to dance the night away, now on the horizon for the holiday season is an experience titled “Your Voices” by British contemporary artist Es Devlin.
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At first glance, the setup looks like something you might find at space camp called an Aerotrim—that device you strap into and get spun around every which way on. What Es Devlin is working on here at Lincoln Center is much larger and has more bells and whistles.
“The illuminated revolving sculpture celebrates the strength and resilience of New York while honoring its linguistic and cultural diversity,” details the Lincoln Center website. “The sculpture is formed of 700 glowing cords, expressing 700 of the languages currently spoken in New York City, tensioned between a series of structural arcs, enveloping visitors within a revolving illuminated network as it rotates north, south, east and west through a multilingual choral soundscape which interweaves languages drawn from all over the city, from Algerian Arabic, Alsatian, Azeri and Ashanti to Zapotec, Zarma and Zulu.”
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The installation will be open for the public to view from December 6-18. At 6 p.m. on December 6, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17 and 18, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has curated a series of choral groups from New York to perform live from inside Es Devlin’s sculpture. All events are free; admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.
It’s highly likely you’ve seen the work of Es Devlin before. In 2022, she designed the set that was used by Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige for the Super Bowl LVI halftime show at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The production won three Emmy Awards including Best Production Design for a Variety Special. Es Devlin also worked with Adele on her Observatory performance last year, which took home five Emmys. To top it off, the London-based artist, acclaimed for her work with kinetic sculptures, scored her first Tony Award in June 2022 for devising a rotating glass structure that served as a midcentury office in the play “The Lehman Trilogy,” directed by Sam-Mendes.
Check out this 2019 TED Talk Es Devlin gave titled “Mind-blowing stage sculptures that fuse music and technology.”
To learn more and for updates about the upcoming display, visit lincolncenter.org/series/lincoln-center-presents/your-voices-49.
Looks like a bad sci-fi movie set from the 1980s.
There’s little grace to it. It’s an updated amusement park decorative entrance.
So don’t visit it then. Easy peasy.
Don’t walk up/down Columbus, only access the library plaza entrance from the side street?
To be fair to the artist, it was probably better as a model in his office/studio, then not gifted engineers and budget trolls decided how it was to be realized.
It’s more aggressive in its public presentation that the “Logan’s Run” set from the summer of 2021.
The bands don’t remove the clunky look.
After having the State Theater and Geffen covered in scaffolding for over two years, we only just got back the handsome open plaza. It was a joy to behold. Now this gyroscope straight out of “Contact” blots out the view of the fountain and the Met, no doubt commissioned by some LC administrator who has to justify their job and salary. Oh well.