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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > July > 23 > Entry
Rome, to be built (and destroyed) in day (and a night)
With its impending renovation coming up, Arthouse is staging what promises to be an utterly intriguing all-out art extravaganza with Liz Glynn’s ‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project.’
The super-performance of live installation art takes place Sept. 26. Beginning at midnight, and over the course of 24 hours, more than a millennium of Roman history will be reconstructed through the building of a mini Rome. Using salvaged building materials, found wood, cardboard and other odd stuff will be used, Glynn will direct collaborators and volunteers in the building of Rome which, once it’s completed, will then destroyed.
During the project performers will enact climatic moments of Roman history. Let’s hope they have an Empero Nero fiddling while the Roman Empire collapses.
Also on the schedule are musical performances, poetry readings, scholarly lectures, architectural tours of the historic Arthouse building and, in appropriately Roman Empire fashion, athletic competitions and feasts.
Glynn debuted ‘24 Hour Roman Reconstruction Project’ in Los Angeles.
Glynn’s use of classical antiquity merges with her response to the re-building of post-Katrina New Orleans and war-ravaged Iraq, both situation where the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” is used as an excuse for the lack of progress.
Architecture reflects life and politics so what better way to tour an entire empire and its people than to try to re-create at 21st-century hype-speed?
And really, what better send-off before Arthouse closes for its $6.5 million renovation? The former theater turned department store turned contemporary arts place will be re-vamped by architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis. Read more about the exciting project here.
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