New York’s New Museum opens free immersive video installation in London

Last week, New York’s New Museum crossed the Atlantic to launch Strange Days: Memories of the Future in London. In collaboration with The Vinyl Factory, and across three floors of the Store X on London's Strand, the video works of 21 acclaimed artists and filmmakers – including Ed Atkins, Pipilotti Rist, Kahlil Joseph – offer a staggering 11 hours of screen time. It’s an intimidating length, thinking you’ll have to spend half of your day to get the full value of an admission price. But rest easy, as the New Museum has made entry free, meaning viewers can return as many times as they wish until it closes in December.

Making reference to 2016’s blockbuster all-video show, Infinite Mix (commissioned by London’s Hayward Gallery) Massimiliano Gioni, Artistic Director of the New Museum, noted the building’s industrialist space “lends itself well to audiovisual works”. 

The artists have all exhibited at the New Museum over the past decade, with Gioni adding that each has “shifted the ways we think about images and memory by recasting their individual experiences and visions alongside speculations on what the future may hold”.

One of the many highlights of this exhibition includes Kahlil Joseph’s Fly Paper (2017), which debuted at the New Museum last year. The film is a homage to Harlem and the late photographer Ray DeCarava and features samples of music from Flying Lotus, Kelsey Lu, Kelan Phil Cohran, and Thundercat, amongst others.

Elsewhere in the show, Pipilotti Rist's immersive 4th Floor To Mildness projects an underwater world onto two screens hanging from the ceiling. The sublime installation also consists of several beds that allow the viewers to observe the work whilst lying alongside other people. Commenting on why she created this shared viewing experience, Rist explains that, because of TVs, screens and tablets, we have all become “separated from each other, for the human being that we are in contact with is always behind glass… But with art, we can jump out of our loneliness”.

Ryan Trecartin shares Item Falls – a series of videos depicting a reality show competition that shows people auditioning for a boy band. Whereas Wong Ping’s Jungle of Desire is an animated video that combines serious subject matter (the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014) with a light-hearted tone that's in keeping with his well-known obscene and vibrant aesthetic. 

Strange Days: Memories of the Future is open until 9th December at The Store X, 180 The Strand, London, WC2R 1EA