Office For Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in collaboration with artist Taryn Simon has erected 11 mega industrial wells at Park Avenue Armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall- which each of them becomes new performative act for the mourners rituals. Co-commissioned by the Armory and Artangel, London, the work started to be developed in 2013 with New York-based artist Taryn Simon and the medium of rituals of mourners transcends itself into monumental structures that go beyond its spiritual act -and get new physical manifestation. 

A conceptual artist working primarily with image and text, Simon breaks form with her first-ever directed performance in a monumental sculptural setting, in which she considers the anatomy of grief and the intricate systems that OMA devises to contend with the irrationality of the universe.

Called Occupation of Loss, OMA's New York office and Taryn Simon designed the large scale sculpture of 11 concrete wells that are activated by 30 professional mourners from around the world each evening. Each well measures 45 feet in height, composed of eight stacked, industrial concrete rings. 

A continuous platform raises the ellipses of wells to distribute their structural load, while integrated lift holds allow cranes to easily stack the rings and facilitate eventual transportation to London. Like Zoroastrian "towers of silence," the installation makes explicit the never-ending human need to give structure to death in order to understand it. 

The monumental installation also aimed to produce a heightened level of enclosed intimacy and confrontation.

''The design was sonically-motivated, focusing on the performative act of loss rather than its physical manifestation, which has been historically marked by multiple scales – from tombstones to the World Trade Center Memorial. The industrial wells were configured into a readymade ruin that responds to both personal and monumental dimensions,'' said Shohei Shigematsu, Partner of OMA's New York Office.

Within each towering structure, mourners enact rituals of grief that resound throughout the vast drill hall. Their rituals are orchestrated by the collective presence, absence and movement of the audience within the installation. OMA's large-scale sculpture of inverted wells functions as a discordant instrument, resembling an organ with each pipe intended to produce its own distinct sound. 

Ranging from purely oral to instrumental, distinct mourning rituals echo from each well to produce a cacophony of sound that are brought into harmony by the 11-voice polyphonic sound module of the wells. 

During the daytime, visitors are invited to activate the sculpture with their own sides, as a subtle drone created from recordings of the mourners' rituals provides echoes of the evening performances.

Project Facts

Project name: Taryn Simon: An Occupation of Loss

Location: New York, USA

Year: 2013-2016

Status: Completed

Program: Exhibition

Partner: Shohei Shigematsu

Art director: Taryn Simon

Team

Associate: Jake Forster -Caroline Corbett

Collaborators

Lighting: Urs Schönenbaum
Production consultant: Marianne Weems
Installation: Art Domantay Artworks, More Specialized Transport

All images © Naho Kubota  

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