"Moving Chains" to Open on Governors Island October 15
Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts are pleased to announce the opening of Moving Chains on Governors Island on October 15, 2022, the se
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Governors Island (en-US)
Cre­ative Time, Gov­er­nors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts are pleased to announce the open­ing of Mov­ing Chains on Gov­er­nors Island on Octo­ber 15, 2022, the sec­ond chap­ter of Charles Gaines’s The Amer­i­can Man­i­fest. The 110-foot kinet­ic sculp­ture acti­vat­ed by colos­sal chains rotat­ing over­head anchors a pub­lic art project that address­es the real­i­ty of sys­temic racism in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca through embod­ied and visu­al expe­ri­ence, and pro­vides crit­i­cal his­tor­i­cal con­text on our extra­or­di­nary polit­i­cal divi­sion today.

Announced in June 2022, Charles Gaines’s The Amer­i­can Man­i­fest is an exhi­bi­tion of mul­ti­me­dia sculp­ture, per­for­mances, and edu­ca­tion­al ses­sions that unfold in three parts across New York City and Cincin­nati, Ohio over 2022 – 23. The open­ing of Mov­ing Chains on Gov­er­nors Island fol­lows the project’s pre­mière in Times Square this July 2022 with Man­i­festos 4: The Dred and Har­ri­et Scott Deci­sion and Roots. Open­ing next, Mov­ing Chains will be on view to the pub­lic on Gov­er­nors Island in New York Har­bor from Octo­ber 15, 2022 through June 2023, before it moves to the banks of the Ohio Riv­er in Cincinnati.

“The sec­ond chap­ter in Charles Gaines’s mon­u­men­tal The Amer­i­can Man­i­fest, Mov­ing Chains is Gov­er­nors Island Arts’ largest pub­lic art com­mis­sion to date and will pro­vide a deeply immer­sive oppor­tu­ni­ty for Island vis­i­tors and all New York­ers to engage with the com­plex his­to­ries and lega­cies of Gov­er­nors Island, New York Har­bor, and the Unit­ed States as a whole,” said Mered­ith John­son, Vice Pres­i­dent of Arts and Cul­ture and Head Cura­tor at the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island. ​“Gov­er­nors Island Arts is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing trans­for­ma­tive artis­tic inter­ven­tions that encour­age New York­ers to engage with the most press­ing issues of our time, and we are hon­ored to work with Charles Gaines and our incred­i­ble part­ners to bring Mov­ing Chains to Gov­er­nors Island.”

Com­mis­sion­ing part­ner Cre­ative Time Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Jus­tine Lud­wig, elab­o­rates on the project, ​“Cre­ative Time is com­mit­ted to com­mis­sion­ing works of art on the scale of dreams that chal­lenge expec­ta­tion. Ambi­tious pub­lic art projects, like the Mov­ing Chains, allow us to fore­front dif­fi­cult ques­tions and reex­am­ine his­tor­i­cal truths. Charles Gaines has pro­vid­ed a clar­i­ty of vision, and exe­cut­ed it on a large-scale that is impos­si­ble to ignore.”

New York City wel­comes the momen­tous pub­lic art engage­ment for New York­ers and its vis­i­tors, ​“Each year, Gov­er­nors Island expands its con­tri­bu­tions to pub­lic art, cul­ture and cre­ativ­i­ty in our city,” said Deputy May­or for Eco­nom­ic and Work­force Devel­op­ment Maria-Tor­res Springer. ​“I encour­age all New York­ers to take a trip out to expe­ri­ence Mov­ing Chains, Chap­ter Two of Charles Gaines’s The Amer­i­can Man­i­fest—a thought-pro­vok­ing and con­se­quen­tial sculp­ture and the Island’s largest pub­lic art com­mis­sion to date.”

For near­ly 50 years, Charles Gaines has dis­tin­guished him­self as an artist ded­i­cat­ed to the per­cep­tion of sub­jec­tive and objec­tive truths. In the artist’s first com­mis­sion of pub­lic art, in devel­op­ment for near­ly a decade, Gaines con­fronts the Amer­i­can ori­gin sto­ry — the nation’s found­ing and its expan­sion — with a series of art­works that dis­sect a nar­ra­tive rid­dled with false­hoods and omis­sions that have fur­thered the project of white suprema­cy. Trac­ing the flow of the his­tor­i­cal­ly charged rivers and ports of New York City and Cincinnati’s Ohio Riv­er, Gaines offers a mul­ti­fac­eted inter­ro­ga­tion of the dual role of the north­ern states in both main­tain­ing and abol­ish­ing slav­ery, and the endur­ing impli­ca­tions of the racial­ized sys­tems, myths, and log­ics that under­pin the nation’s eco­nom­ic and legal foun­da­tions today.

ABOUT MOV­ING CHAINS ON GOV­ER­NORS ISLAND

Open­ing Octo­ber 15, 2022

Mov­ing Chains is a mon­u­men­tal 110-foot long kinet­ic sculp­ture built from steel and sus­tain­ably har­vest­ed Sapele, com­mon­ly referred to as African Mahogany, a tree native to West Africa. Cre­at­ed by Charles Gaines with col­lab­o­rat­ing archi­tects TOLO Archi­tec­ture, the sculp­ture, which peo­ple may enter and walk through, con­tains nine cus­tom made chains weigh­ing over 1,600 pounds each run­ning its length over­head. Eight of the chains are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the pace of the cur­rents in New York Har­bor, while a ninth cen­tral chain moves more quick­ly, recall­ing the pace of ship and barge traf­fic that has trav­eled the city’s water­ways for cen­turies. The over­all effect of the weight and motion of the chains pro­duces a rhyth­mic, undu­lat­ing loop, evoca­tive of the sounds of New York Har­bor at the entrance to the Hud­son Riv­er, known to the area’s Indige­nous res­i­dents the Lenape as Mahi­can­tuck, the riv­er that runs two ways. Start­ing dur­ing the Dutch and British occu­pa­tions, this water­way near present-day low­er Man­hat­tan would become an eco­nom­ic pil­lar of the transat­lantic slave trade and seed the sys­tem of racial cap­i­tal­ism foun­da­tion­al to the Unit­ed States. Fac­ing the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty — an inter­na­tion­al sym­bol of benev­o­lence and human rights, dis­tin­guished by the abo­li­tion­ist iconog­ra­phy of a bro­ken shack­le and chain at her right foot—Mov­ing Chains calls atten­tion to the nation’s eco­nom­ic, judi­cial, and polit­i­cal frame­works that con­tin­ue the lega­cy of slav­ery today.

To accom­pa­ny Mov­ing Chains, Cre­ative Time and Gov­er­nors Island Arts will present a con­fer­ence on abo­li­tion and the lim­its of the law on the Island this Spring 2023, recon­sid­er­ing legal and cul­tur­al def­i­n­i­tions of free­dom and the unfin­ished project of abo­li­tion. Bring­ing togeth­er an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary group of thinkers, the accom­pa­ny­ing pro­grams will ask, how can lib­er­a­tion be defined out­side of the con­fines of slav­ery and racial cap­i­tal­ism? What does free­dom look like? What tac­tics are nec­es­sary to get there? Who is lead­ing us in this work?

On the occa­sion of Mov­ing Chains, Black Gotham Expe­ri­ence, a project that reimag­ines spaces direct­ly impact­ed by the African Dias­po­ra estab­lished by artist and his­to­ri­an Kamau Ware, will offer an audio tour of the pre-colo­nial, colo­nial, and post-colo­nial pat­terns that have informed a cen­turies-long rela­tion­ship with what are known today as the East and Hud­son Rivers and New York Har­bor. Access to the tour will be avail­able through­out the path­way to Mov­ing Chains via QR code and on both the Cre­ative Time and Gov­er­nors Island Arts websites.

ABOUT THE AMER­I­CAN MANIFEST

Sit­ed with­in two key cities whose his­to­ries have shaped the iden­ti­ty of Amer­i­ca, this project invites the pub­lic to con­sid­er New York and Cincinnati’s water­ways’ in both uphold­ing slav­ery and secur­ing lib­er­a­tion, a dual­i­ty that chal­lenges reduc­tive nar­ra­tives of the his­to­ry of slav­ery in Amer­i­ca, and con­tributes to the ongo­ing dia­logue about sys­tems and cycles of racism, extrac­tion, and oppres­sion expe­ri­enced today.

PROJECT SUP­PORT

Charles Gaines: The Amer­i­can Man­i­fest is made pos­si­ble in New York and Cincin­nati by the vision­ary sup­port of the Ford Foun­da­tion, Lam­bent Foun­da­tion Fund, a fund of Tides Foun­da­tion, the Mel­lon Foun­da­tion, VIA Art Fund, Foto­Fo­cus, The Stavros Niar­chos Foun­da­tion, Cha­ri­na Endow­ment Fund, Don­ald A. Pels Char­i­ta­ble Trust, the Jacques and Natasha Gel­man Foun­da­tion, Mor­gan Stan­ley, Wave Pool, and mediaThe Foun­da­tion, inc.

Major sup­port is pro­vid­ed by Hauser & Wirth, Suzanne and Bob Cochran, Marie Dou­glas, Karl Iag­nem­ma and Ann-Kris­ten Lund, Jacob and Deb­o­rah Kotzubei, Jon Nei­dich, Bob and Renee Par­sons, San­jeev Rathi, Eric Richter, Wad­dell Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, Jed Walen­tas, Christo­pher Walk­er, Mar­garet Wang, Debi and Steven Wisch, and addi­tion­al anony­mous donors.

We are also grate­ful for the sup­port of the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts (NEA); pub­lic funds from the New York City Depart­ment of Cul­tur­al Affairs (DCA) in part­ner­ship with the City Coun­cil and May­or Eric Adams; and the New York State Coun­cil on the Arts (NYSCA) with the sup­port of Gov­er­nor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

PROJECT TEAM

Charles Gaines’s Mov­ing Chains was devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with TOLO Archi­tec­ture, as well as numer­ous pro­duc­tion part­ners in its design and con­struc­tion includ­ing, engi­neer­ing and mechan­i­cal design by AOA; instal­la­tion and build by Tor­silieri & Sons; sound engi­neer­ing by Arup; and fab­ri­ca­tion work by Strong­hold Indus­tries and Rozell Indus­tries.

ABOUT CHARLES GAINES