For immediate release:
Monday, May 12, 2008

Contact:
Elizabeth Rapuano, (212) 440-2205


BATTERY MARITIME BUILDING TO BE HOME TO NEW GOVERNORS ISLAND WAITING ROOM AND INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION BY DAVID BYRNE PRESENTED BY CREATIVE TIME   
Governors Island waiting room funded by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer

Creative Time presents “Playing the Building: An Installation by David Byrne” that all visitors are invited to sit and “play”

The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer today opened the first ever Governors Island waiting room in the Battery Maritime Building. The waiting room was funded by a $500,000 grant from the Borough President’s office, as well as with funds provided by New York State and New York City. The waiting room will be a permanent space used by visitors to Governors Island. Renowned musician and artist David Byrne and Creative Time joined today’s event to also announce a temporary 9,000 square foot interactive sound installation that will open in the Great Hall of the Battery Maritime Building later this month. Both the waiting room and the installation open to the public on May 31st.

“Governors Island is an incredible resource for Lower Manhattan and indeed, all of New York City,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. “I am pleased that the new waiting room and David Byrne’s incredible installation will draw thousands of visitors to experience the Battery Maritime Building in an entirely new way.”

Both Governors Island and “Playing the Building” will open on May 31st. Governors Island will be open to the public every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from May 31st to October 5th. “Playing the Building” will be open Friday – Sunday from May 31st to August 10th from 10 AM to 6 PM.

“Governors Island is a place coming back to life,” said Avi Schick, Chairman of GIPEC. “The new waiting room will greet thousands this year as visitors make their way to experience summer programs, concerts and activities a short ferry ride away from Lower Manhattan.”

“Governors Island is at the center of New York Harbor,” said Dan Doctoroff, Vice Chair of GIPEC. “GIPEC is grateful to Scott Stringer for his support of a waiting room that will create a safe, comfortable place for Island visitors throughout the open season.”


“The Battery Maritime Building is the gateway to Governors Island,” said Leslie Koch, President of the Governors Island Preservation. “We are grateful to Borough President Stringer for his support of this incredible new space that connects the Island of Manhattan with Governors Island.”

The 3,000 square foot space will be open throughout the year. During Governors Island’s open season, it will be a space for visitors to wait for the free seven minute ferry ride to the Island. In the off-season months, visitors and others can stop by to gather information on the Island and what is happening there. The room will feature a National Park Service kiosk which will provide information and sell items to visitors in the summer and early fall.

“We are grateful to Borough President Scott Stringer for the generous grant that helped create this amazing space,” said Robert Pirani, Executive Director of the Governors Island Alliance. “The new waiting room is another terrific step forward in the rebirth of Governors Island.”

“Playing the Building” is a site-specific installation in which the infrastructure of the Battery Maritime Building is converted into a giant musical instrument. The project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ, placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery, that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building’s elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds. All visitors are invited to sit and “play” the installation.

“Typical parts of buildings can be used to produce interesting sounds. Everyone is familiar with the fact that if you rap on a metal column, for example, you will hear a ping or a clang, but I wondered if the pipes could be turned into giant flutes, and if a machine could make girders vibrate and produce tones,” states David Byrne. “I’m aware that this piece works—if it does—as much because of the context as because of anything I’ve put in there. Creative Time and I looked at a lot of spaces, and the Battery Maritime Building helps to visually tell the story of what this piece is about in a way that not every place can.”

“David is most widely known as a musician, but he is an extraordinary writer, visual artist, and director who resists categorization, plays around with grey zones, and favors a life of broad creativity,” says Anne Pasternak, curator of the exhibition and President and Artistic Director at Creative Time. “Playing the Building is deceptive in its simplicity; it's layered with rich meaning relating to human nature, our contemporary relationship to place and sound, and considerations of shifts in culture at large.”

Governors Island anticipates welcoming more than 75,000 visitors this summer. The Island will be open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from May 31st to October 5th. For more information on the Island, a schedule of events, and programs, please visit www.govisland.com.

About the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation

The Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC) is responsible for the planning, redevelopment and ongoing operations for 150 acres of Governors Island. A partnership of New York City and New York State, GIPEC seeks to bring Governors Island back to life, making this island at the center of New York Harbor a destination with great public open space, as well as future education, not for profit and commercial facilities. For more information please visit www.govisland.com.

CREATIVE TIME

Playing the Building continues Creative Time’s history of animating and amplifying unique spaces in New York City’s urban landscape. This practice began over 30 years ago, when Creative Time transformed sites in Lower Manhattan that were left in disuse or neglect by the city’s recession, including: the First Precinct House; a beach created from the landfill of building the World Trade Center (that eventually became Battery Park City); the U.S. Customs House, with Max Neuhaus’ sound installation Round: Sound for Concave Surfaces; as well as the Battery Maritime Building with the performance Love of A Poet by John Kelly in 1990. Creative Time’s recent projects include Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans; Mike Nelson’s A Psychic Vacuum; Doug Aitken’s sleepwalkers, a film projected on the Museum of Modern Art, NY; and Tribute in Light, which served as a gesture of hope and healing after 9/11.


Contacts:
Elizabeth Rapuano (Governors Island) 212.440.2205 (o)/ 914.830.1565 (c)
Maureen Sullivan (Creative Time) 212.206.6674 x205 (o)
Dick Riley (Borough President’s office) 212.669.7085 (o)