'24 HOUR ROMAN RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT'

Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

In 24 hours at Arthouse, artist Liz Glynn guides the public in the building and destroying of am empire

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Sunday, September 20, 2009

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Or so they say.

Beginning at midnight Friday, Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn will orchestrate a 24-hour participatory event in which the public is invited to Arthouse, the Congress Avenue contemporary art center, to help Glynn build — and then destroy — a miniature version of ancient Rome entirely from recycled and reclaimed materials.

More than a millennium of Roman history is traversed in Glynn's "24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project," from the city's founding in the middle of the eighth century B.C.. to the sacking of the Roman Empire in 410 A.D. by the Visigoths.

"It's about 1.238 years per minute," said Glynn by phone recently from her L.A. studio.

And she plans to keep the schedule on track — down to the minute — with various happenings to mark notable historical episodes. At 7:30 a.m. Saturday (aka 509 B.C.), the Roman Republic will emerge. Pizza will be served when Carthage is destroyed at 12:27 p.m. (146 B.C.) Greco-Roman wrestling will be demonstrated by members of the University of Texas wrestling team at 2:27 p.m. to mark Rome's shift from republic to empire (27 B.C..). And from 4:39 to 4:56 p.m., a fiddler will play to mark the reign of Nero and the burning of Rome in 64 A.D. Live music, poetry readings and lectures on everything from the Roman perfection of the arch to the Roman invention of concrete will offer participants and viewers a greater understanding of historical events.

All along, the city of Rome will evolve at a playhouse scale, built from cardboard, lumber scraps and other found materials. Using Samuel Ball Platner's and Thomas Ashby's "Topographical Dictionary of Rome" — a classic academic volume — Glynn mapped out a historical topography of Rome, creating detailed histories of the known buildings and monuments and charting their various stories of creation, renovation and destruction. Participants follow Glynn's plans as Rome's architectural infrastructure morphs through history.

Just as Glynn's project marks an auspicious era in Western civilization, so does it mark an auspicious moment for Arthouse. The oldest statewide visual arts organization in Texas, Arthouse, which started in 1911 as the Texas Fine Arts Association, is about to begin a major $6.6 million renovation of its downtown Austin home. Once a 1920s movie theater, then a department store, the building at Seventh Street and Congress Avenue will be transformed once again to become a modern contemporary arts venue suited for flexible arts events and multimedia creative displays. The Rome project is the last public event at Arthouse before it closes for a year. It will re-open in fall 2010.

"The layering of our building, the history, the re-building — there's interesting correlations between what we're doing as an institution and what (Glynn's project) suggests," says Arthouse curator Elizabeth Dunbar. "Plus it's just a big fun bang — a way for people to remember us while we're closed for a year."

(The Roman theme will start Monday with a screening of Eve Sussman's art video "The Rape of the Sabine Women." See related story, above.)

The Arthouse iteration of "24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project" is the third time Glynn has staged the marathon public art building extravaganza. She first did the project in Los Angeles in 2008, then did it again last year at New York's New Museum.

But in true Texas style, at Arthouse, Rome will be bigger. The ancient city will have 3,000 square feet of gallery space on which to grow. And drywall and lumber from the recently disassembled movable gallery walls will give serious heft to the mini-monuments beyond the cardboard Glynn used previously. The entire 24-hour project will be filmed in stop-motion for future viewing.

By no means a lifelong Roman history buff, Glynn started contemplating the contemporary use of the clich? "Rome wasn't built in a day" as it cropped up in conversations and public chatter about the re-building of war-ravaged Iraq and post-Katrina New Orleans.

"It's the clich? I was drawn to more than anything else," says Glynn. Then she began considering what notions of contemporary empire building (and destroying) were implicit in that clich? and what kind of artistic exercise might spur discussion about it.

"The best part of the project has been the conversations that start spontaneously among participants. People start sharing their specialized knowledge or help each other problem-solve, and whatever issues arise from the project are all discussed publicly," says Glynn.

And while the fervor of a marathon group building project might spark interesting exchanges, the final act of destroying Rome brings out a very different kind of group response.

"Destruction is a very human impulse, and some people have no compunction about jumping in and stomping on (what's been built)," says Glynn. "I find (the destruction) a little emotional, actually. It's a little hard to watch. But then, it's a part of the whole story."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

Early Roman tale told in 1960s-set film

It's "Mad Men" meets Roman myth in Eve Sussman's breathtaking, extravagant 80-minute art video, "The Rape of the Sabine Women."

Conceived as something of a dialogue-less visual opera, "The Rape of the Sabine Women" is a video musical reinterpretation of the legend of the founding of Rome, in particular the episode in which the first generation of Roman men acquires wives by force from the neighboring tribe of Sabine.

Sussman - a Brooklyn-based video artist and art-world favorite - has updated the mythic tale by transporting it to a trendy, hyper-polished 1960s midcentury modern setting. In Sussman's Rome, the warriors are slim suit-wearing James Bond types while the Sabines are stylishly coiffed women in large sunglasses and Jackie Onassis-style dresses.

Arthouse presents the video in a free screening Monday night at the Paramount Theatre. Sussman will be on hand for a post-screening Q-and-A.

Sussman took as her launching point the artistic interpretations of the Sabine tale as it was rendered memorably in paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David - especially David's 1799 "Intervention of the Sabine Women." But Sussman modernized the background of her artistic riff on the ancient tale. Shot against sleek settings in Berlin and also in Athens' gritty Agora meat market and at a classic 1960s modernist dream house overlooking the Aegean Sea, the lavish production involved hundreds of actors that dramatize the painterly scenes.

A riveting score by Jonathan Bepler adds to the visually intense story and acts as a stand-in for any dialogue. Bepler recorded sounds live on site and also included an ensemble of bouzoukis (Greek stringed instruments) and a chorus of 800 voices.

Sussman's extravagant retelling of the Sabine tale delivers viewers to a pleasant point just before sensory overload.

- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

'24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project'

When: Midnight Friday through midnight Saturday

Where: Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.

Tickets: Free

Information: 453-5312, www.arthousetexas.org

'Eve Sussman: The Rape of the Sabine Women,' a film screening and artist talk

When: 7 p.m. Monday

Where: Paramount Theatre, 713 Congress Ave.

Tickets: Free

Information: 453-5312, www.arthousetexas.org