Public Art Fund x The Film-Makers' Cooperative: Water Works

This fall, Public Art Fund is thrilled to launch No Swimsuit Required, an ongoing project featuring films, performances, and sound installations in New York City public pools during their off-season. The first iteration, Water Works, will take place across two evenings in September and will explore water as a thematic framework. These events will be hosted at Hamilton Fish Pool – an Olympic-sized pool and architectural landmark on the Lower East Side – after it has been drained following the summer season.

Conceived as an Expanded Cinema presentation utilizing multiple projectors and screens, Water Works will feature experimental 16mm and digital films that explore bodies of water, from vast oceans and serene rivers to turbulent seas stirred by ships and ordinary drips from a leaky faucet. The audience will step inside the drained pool, explore the empty space, and lounge on sun beds while encountering a diversity of moving image works, including ravishing seascapes and landscapes, hand-processed films, Structuralist cinema, and works with an eco-critical perspective. These films will create an experiential atmosphere and showcase the myriad perspectives contained within moving image artists’ visions of water. 

Film and video artworks will be accompanied by live performances by sound artists Eli Keszler (September 21) and María Chavez (September 27), who will employ the films’ audio for their interventions. Water Works will feature films by Stan Brakhage, Dietmar Brehm, James Cagle, Mary Helena Clark, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, David Gatten, Helena Gouveia Monteiro, Vincent Grenier, Friedl vom Gröller, Ann Deborah Levy, Abinadi Meza, Youjin Moon, Mary Beth Reed, Dan Perz, Chick Strand, Gao Wei, and Joyce Wieland.

No Swimsuit Required is curated by Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice. 

Water Works is a collaboration between Public Art Fund and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative; it is co-curated by Tom Day, Executive Director, NACG/The Film-Makers’ Cooperative and Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice, Public Art Fund.

Registration is suggested but not required.

Accessibility: This program will take place inside an empty 3-foot-deep swimming pool. Attendees can access it via stainless steel pool ladders or an ADA-compliant ramp. Films screened include strobe-like visual effects, which may affect people suffering from epilepsy and other conditions triggered by light stimulation. Please contact programs@publicartfund.org with questions and requests for accessibility.