Call it performance art.
Ai Weiwei’s cage-like “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” installation under the Washington Square Arch has already seen at least a few people try to climb it.
The theme of the Public Art Fund’s citywide installation of Ai’s artworks — there are 300 of his pieces around the Big Apple — is to illustrate, symbolically, how the Trump administration has closed America’s traditional feeling of openness, including to immigrants.
While there is a cutout in the project’s Washington Square Arch centerpiece — providing a space people can walk through — maybe some people just want to go over the fence, too. Or are just climbing it because, well…it’s there.
This past Monday, Magdalena Martynowicz, visiting from Alaska, started to climb up the piece’s metal bars, but, after reaching about halfway up, decided to come back down.
“Someone said, ‘Well, you knew where to stop, when you were having some difficulty reaching the top,’” she told The Villager. “No, I could easily have reached the top,” she explained. “My boyfriend was telling for me to come down.”
Martynowicz had no fear.
“I climb trees!” she said. “I can climb any tree!”
Last Wednesday, one guy started to clamber up the high-profile public artwork, but didn’t get far. This time, though, he didn’t come down voluntarily.
“The guy got like 5 feet in the air,” a Sixth Precinct source said. “When the officers got there, he jumped down and ran away. They didn’t pursue him. It’s very petty. There was no video or anything.”
No one is guarding the piece — which some have taken to calling the “bird cage” — per se.
“We have officers stationed in the park,” the officer said, “but not specifically for that sculpture.”
Some small fences seen in front of the large “Fence”’s opening under the arch last Thursday were not put there by the police, according to him.
“Those have nothing to do with us,” he said. “They’re on the side. If they put them there, it’s the Parks Department.”
Lincoln Anderson
and Sharon Woolums
