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Janet Cardiff in Central Park

June 17, 2005

For all the city's many joys, there is still nothing more daunting than New York during a heat wave. It's just something about the city's distinctive olfactory blend of rotting garbage, urine, and (if we're in the vicinity) stale booze, that just makes us want to encase ourselves in an hermetically sealed white space until the temperature drops. So, as you can imagine, it takes a quite lot to tear us away from the little altar we've recently built around our air conditioning unit. However, we'll happily be whipping out the perfumed handkerchiefs and strapping on the personal cooling system this weekend for Janet Cardiff's new public art piece in Central Park.

Cardiff, who is known for her audio "Walks" in which she provides visitors with CD narratives to shape their experience of an indoor or outdoor environment, blew New York audiences away back in 2001 with her very moving installation at P.S.1. Now she is back with Her Long Black Hair , a 35 minute guided audio journey through Central Park which retraces the steps the mysterious dark haired woman of the title. We are not sure quite what to expect, but the Public Art Fund's site describes the work as a "complex investigation of location, time, sound, and physicality, interweaving stream-of-consciousness observations with fact and fiction, local history, opera and gospel music, and other atmospheric and cultural elements."

Before beginning their trip, each visitor will be given an audio kit, which will include a CD player, as well as stack of photographs which will be incorporated into the walk. This kit will be available Thursday through Monday from 9:30am to 5pm at a kiosk located at 59th and 6th. Visitors will have to leave a driver's license or credit card as a deposit. Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling 212-446-9529 by 4pm the day before. The work will run from June 17th to September 13th.