Blow Up the Wall!

The design of this project was bookended by the election and inauguration of Donald Trump, in whose rhetoric the wall has become both a real and imaginary device of hate. Trump’s “wall” trades primarily on its role in division and exclusion—it is a representation and embodiment of intolerance and xenophobia. This gives walls an unduly bad rap. In Blow Up The Wall!, we mean to expand, or inflate, rather, the imagination around the wall.

In Blow Up The Wall!, the brutal concrete walls of the courtyard at MoMA PS1 become the support, the ground, and the horizon of the project; they define the zone of greatest intensity. Large inflated figures hang over its edge, breaking their lines, rivaling their scale, and making spaces to gather, tarry, and find refuge. Moving bodies, dancing to the music, strike rhythm with the pulsing cipher of lights that line their surface. Rocking benches pump up the inflated figures that hang over its edges and launch off their faces. Through the night, and over months, a streaking mixture of pink, white, and yellow sand roils at their base. Blow Up The Wall! is an urban garden with native creatures in a parallel nature. (With SCHAUM/SHIEH)