Here’s what’s on display in the park:
Miranda July is a fiction writer (No One Belongs Here More Than You), a filmmaker (Me and You and Everyone We Know), a performance artist (Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About), and an occasional sculptress. It’s that latter designation that’s the focus of a new public art installation, the comparatively terse “Eleven Heavy Things,” organized by Deitch Projects, which opened late last week in New York’s Union Square Park. (The installation will remain in the park through October 3rd.) The sculptures, many of which revolve around a line of text written in July’s own hand, prod the viewer into audience interaction. “What I look like when I’m lying,” reads one, a white tablet through which the viewer can stick his head. A trio of pedestals — labeled ‘The Guilty One,’ ‘The Guiltier One,’ and ‘The Guiltiest One’ — asks participants to gauge (and flaunt) their general culpability. Three of the sculptures are wordless “headdresses,” decorative sculptures that July compares to the dialogue-free stretches of a movie: “The shapes are those parts of this piece.”