Public artwork by Florian Dombois comes to BU as metaphorical centerpiece to TransCultural Exchange’s 2013 Engaging Minds Conference
Boston, MA – German/Swiss artist Florian Dombois will light up the sky on the Boston University campus through the installation of uboc No. 1 & stuVi2, a temporary, site-specific artwork for TransCultural Exchange’s 2013 Conference Engaging Minds: International Opportunities in the Arts — October 10–13, 2013.
uboc No. 1 & stuVi2
Public art installation for TransCultural Exchange’s 2013 Engaging Minds Conference
Dates: Thursday, October 10 – Sunday, October 13, 2013
Artist: Florian Dombois
Viewing Times: Dusk to 2am
uboc No. 2 & stuVi2 will stretch across the Boston skyline from October 10th to the 13th from dusk to 2am. It will consist of a highly-visible, aquamarine blue laser, used to connect two towers, Boston University’s School of Law — Josep Lluis Sert’s modernist icon, nicknamed by the students as the ugliest building on campus (uboc No. 1) — and the new dormitory, Student Village 2 (StuVi2). The laser will also function as a range finder, which will measure the distance — the architectural and geophysical dialog — between the two, and in real time, project their movements onto a small screen.
“It is an elegant metaphor, the perfect Conference centerpiece,” said Mary Sherman, Executive Director of TransCultural Exchange and Curator for the installation. “Situated at a unique crossroads, the laser stretches across the only juncture in America where all the most common modes of transportation and ways in which people are brought together converge.”
The display will span a major interstate (I-90), busy flight pattern (Logan Airport), waterway (the Charles River), railroad line (Amtrak and the local commuter rail), and auto and pedestrian bridge (the Boston University Bridge). As such, it is the idea reflection of the Conference’s convening of people from around the globe, united by their belief in the power of art.
Florian Dombois often analyzes natural phenomena through his work. Interdisciplinary in nature, his works explore the relationship between art and science.The laser links the towers, which are more than a half mile apart. Their foundations are tied to the same shifting tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s elastic crust. Locally, they are buffeted by the same surrounding traffic and winds. Consequently, they move sometimes closer, sometimes further apart. They share much in common; yet, like between us all, a distance remains.
The buildings chosen for Dombois’ uboc No. 1 & stuVi2 also share similar physical attributes — most notably, their roof and profile. One, though, is designed by a star architect, older and clearly of a previous generation. The other is designed by an architectural firm, clad in shiny new materials, more contemporary and unmistakably ambivalent in its relationship to its elder. Despite stuVi2’s commanding height and placement, its mimicry of the School of Law’s profile reflects the same fear, mingled with longing to break away from its roots that its inhabitants and, at times, all of us must feel towards our own individual collective pasts.
The projected ‘conversation’ between the two structures is crucial to the piece’s meaning. Dombois encourages us to view the work as more than a spectacle. The laser visually binds the buildings into a singular form; the projection, though, reveals something less rigid, another mod of being — one that does not overpower, merge, or subsume the other into a formation. uboc No. 1 & stuVi2 touches upon the heart of what it means to be human — the necessity of flexibility and exchange. It presents a fluid give-and-take reciprocity, an ever-evolving basis for a more enduring connection.
uboc No. 1 & stuVi2 presents a marvelous co-existence that parallels TransCultural Exchange’s core mission, which is to create a greater understanding of world cultures – one that recognizes, celebrates, and explores the differences between us, what we share in common, and how we can respectfully support one another.
For more information on uboc No. 1 & stuVi2 and Engaging Minds: International Opportunities in the Arts, visit http://www.bu.edu/cfa/visual-arts/galleries/transcultural-exchange-conference/.
About the Artist
Florian Dombois is an artist who studied geophysics and philosophy in Berlin, Kiel, and Hawaii. He founded the “Institute Y” for transdisciplinary exchange between the arts and research and teaching. He currently serves as a professor at the Zürich University of the Arts and is also a visiting professor at the Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zürich. He has shown widely nationally and internationally, including at the Kunsthall Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, Bünder Kunstmuseum Chur, ZKM Karlsruhe, Museum Ludwig Koblenz, Fundació Suñol Barcelona, Riga Art Space, and CIC Cairo. In 2010, he received the German Sound Art Prize.