Hansel & Gretel

Park Avenue Armory unveiled a collaborative, site-specific commission by Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei. The immersive, interactive installation, Hansel & Gretel creates an eerie landscape permeated by modern-day surveillance. Placing visitors in the position of the observed and the observer, the multilayered work submerges audiences in an environment where their every movement is tracked and monitored.

  The artists conjure up an environment that envelops visitors and transforms them into active elements in the work. Visitors make their way through the Armory’s bunkers and are plunged into darkness until they encounter a 5-foot high bluff filling the cavernous space of the Drill Hall. Their movement is recorded by infrared cameras, broadcast to a global online audience, and fed back into the installation. The visitors’ image is projected back onto the floor, becoming interrupted by shadows formed by surveillance drones that periodically survey the Drill Hall. The experience inverts the fairytale of Hansel & Gretel— instead of purposively leaving a trail to avoid getting lost, the surreptitious tracking of visitors makes it impossible to hide their location.

until 6 August 2017
Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei, Hansel & Gretel
curated by Tom Eccles and Hans-Ulrich Obrist
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue, New York