14 art students living in wtc1 in tents for a month
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In a back room that looks like an abandoned garbage-collection area, German artist Nico Haupt lurks in the dimness. A cheap electric fan wafts air from a defunct freight-elevator shaft to the desk where Haupt creates computer videos.
Haupt ran the first RealAudio server in Germany, and staged the kind of publicity-seeking art events that Harris finds irresistible: a stunt, for instance, that called for 6 million unemployed people to jump in the ocean simultaneously, causing it to flood the home of former chancellor Helmut Kohl. "Only 200 people came," Haupt says. "But there were thousands from the press!"
Hoping to work at Pseudo, Haupt flew to New York and met Harris at one of his many parties. "He talked to me only one sentence," says Haupt. "He said, 'Move in.'" To Haupt, this seemed normal enough. "My profession is always to work with eccentric people, because I myself am also eccentric."
He collaborated on the premillennial event, and hopes to help develop the Luvvyplex. "For me it is a mixture of Brave New World, Big Brother, and Lord of the Flies. Sometimes fascistic - that is always the danger of the Internet, because there are people who want to control everything, and it provides an opportunity for them."
Yeah, but read the article... From what I can tell the only connection between Haupt and Gelatin is Harris sponsered/invested in them both.
Quote:
Hoping to work at Pseudo, Haupt flew to New York and met Harris at one of his many parties. "He talked to me only one sentence," says Haupt. "He said, 'Move in.'"
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Josh Harris was the owner of Pseudo Programs, so Nico came to NYC from Germany specifically because he wanted to work for Harris.
Harris had a building on lower Broadway that he calls the Luvvyplex, where he was subsidizing a handful of European artists who sleep and work in claustrophobic cubicles fashioned from bare Sheetrock. This is where the author says Nico was in the back lurking in the dimness. I don't think it's a stretch to assume Nico was living here.
So who were the handful of European artists who also lived at the Luvvyplex? Possibly 4 Austrians who called themselves Gelatin or is that Gelitin?
BTW: Pseudo is an interesting company
Quote:
Pseudo received heavy media coverage in August with its painstaking coverage of the Republican National Convention. The site featured live video from five 360 degree cameras stationed throughout the convention hall, live interviews with newsmakers and 24-hour chatrooms where site users could carry on their own political discussions.
So who were the handful of European artists who also lived at the Luvvyplex? Possibly 4 Austrians who called themselves Gelatin or is that Gelitin?
I doubt it...
Quote:
If that isn't clear enough, he describes another event he managed. Artist friends from Europe, who rented space in the World Trade Center, decided one day that they simply had to remove one of the huge plate-glass windows, hang a temporary balcony outside, and stand on it naked.
"It made sense to me," says Harris. "So I rented the biggest suite I could get at the Hilton, directly opposite. I invited people to show up at 11. By about 4:30 am, we're all in a zone: We're drinking a little bit, a little pot maybe, we had movies, music - one room was dark, with a bed. Around 5:30, four of us went to the heliport on the West Side. We chartered a helicopter, flew down at dawn, and circled the World Trade Center with video cameras. The artists put out their balcony, stood on it, and we got the whole thing. Then we all came back together at the Hilton. We were happy because no one had gotten caught, and we had a huge breakfast. And that breakfast was the groove. From seven till ten in the morning, we sat there, and realized, 'This is it! This is the thing!'"
Silver nods and smiles. He's one of the few people who doesn't think there's anything crazy about Harris. "There's nobody like him," he says. "He's eccentric, but I've watched him make money with no money. And out of 20 stupid things he might do, one great thing will happen. That makes it all worthwhile."
According to the opening post at least 4 lived there... In the WTC on the 91st floor.
gelitin is comprised of four artists. They met first in 1978, when they all attended a summercamp. They have been playing and working together. From 1993 they began exhibiting internationally.
Ali Janka / Born 1971 Education：1990-1997 Mag.-Art., University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
Florian Reither / Born 1967 Education：1988-97 Dipl.-Ing. Urbanism and City Planning, Technical University, Vienna, Austria
Tobias Urban / Born 1967 Education：1987-93 Mag.-Art., University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria
Wolfgang Gantner / Born 1970 Education：1988 Journalism and Political Science, University of Vienna
On the other end of the social-aesthetic spectrum, the Viennese artists Gelatin had an opening scheduled for the evening of the attack. The show was to feature photographs documenting The B-Thing, 2000, an elaborate piece that involved the artists removing a Trade Center window to install a stumpy "balcony" for just enough time to have a furtive cup of coffee before they restored the facade to its original condition. Their dealer, Leo Koenig, Internet pied piper Pied Piper, Josh Harris, and a group of partygoers watched the whole operation from a nearby hotel and from a helicopter. The action was reported over a year later in an August New York Times article that included complaints from WTC officials about the potential for bodily harm to passersby below -- not to mention the artists themselves. "Our piece was a very simple, nice thing," says Gelatin member Ali Janka. "It was a physical extension of the building. The architect made the windows a little bit narrower than the width of his shoulders, so as not to be overwhelmed by his fear of heights. Our balcony was also a physical reaction -- we just wanted to step out and see the sunrise."
Gelatin canceled its opening reception, and when they finally did open their show, they decided to leave out the World Trade Center work. "I was shocked when I saw the blurry images of people hanging out the windows, thinking about jumping, thinking about their lives ending soon." says Janka. "These images looked so similar to the pictures we took with that one window missing. That really scared me." But despite this visual similarity, as well as the fact that their project involved the physical deformation of the Trade Center, Janka insists there is no connection between the two events, and says that their work will go on unchanged: "It's not like the world was any better before this attack. It's just that the people who were dying were doing it elsewhere. This attack was really horrible. But we live in Vienna. There was war practically ten kilometers from our studio for ten years and we continued our work."
9:07 PM Dec 6
