The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has announced that it will extend its "SONG 1" installation by a week, through May 20—enabling architects visiting the nation’s capital for the AIA 2012 National Convention and Design Exposition to see the video and architectural installation on the National Mall.
"SONG 1," a video installation by artist Doug Aitken, makes use of the concrete façade of the Hirshhorn’s Gordon Bunshaft–designed cylindrical museum. From sundown to midnight each evening, 11 high-powered projectors display the video along the museum’s 360-degree surface. The video features actors, artists, and musicians, including John Doe of the seminal Los Angeles punk band X, singing “I Only Have Eyes for You,” a haunting hit made famous by the Flamingos.
The New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones and Cincinnati Art Museum director (and ARCHITECT contributor) Aaron Betsky will be among the speakers at a symposium being held on Friday, May 11, in honor of the closing of the exhibit. “Art in the Expanded Field” will assemble speakers and lecturers inside the museum’s Ring Auditorium for most of the evening.
Meanwhile, outside the museum, as part of a special “happening,” the Hirshhorn has invited a number of the musicians who appeared in Aitken’s video to perform a live soundtrack to the video piece. High Places, No Age, and Places, Oneohtrix Point Never, and others will perform live, while Geologist, a founding member of Animal Collective, will DJ a set of renditions of “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
The extension is made possible by the AIA and Worldstage.
