Over the past 12 months, DMC and the City of Rochester have invited the community to participate in the redesign process of Peace Plaza. From integrating universal design elements to enhancing the current Peace Fountain, every inch of space has been considered down to the smallest detail. We invite you to continue to be part of the dialogue in this design process by imagining how the integration of art can transform one of our most valued public spaces. The final elements to be fit into place are the installations of four world-renowned artists whose previous works have been featured around the globe.
Eric Anderson – Rochester, MN
Ann Hamilton – Columbus, OH
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – Montreal, Quebec
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle – Chicago, IL
On October 18, all four artists will be in Rochester to share their works-in-progress with the community. DMC and the City of Rochester invite you an open house and lunch presentation at Castle Community.
Each installation has been carefully integrated into the design of Heart of the City: Phase 1. The art provides new life to the plaza as part of Destination Medical Center’s quality of life and public realm initiatives. The artworks were developed through a collaborative process that integrated artists and curators within the design team. Collectively, the design of the plaza and its embedded artworks encourage us to be present in this place — both in moments of personal introspection and shared spectacle. Together these artworks create layered stories of time and place within the plaza that, due to the interactive and responsive nature of the works, will never repeat. Each visit to the plaza, whether for an event, or alone, will offer new discoveries.
- Location: Castle Community, Les Fields Hall, 3rd floor, 121 N Broadway Ave, Rochester, MN 55906.
- Lunch Presentation: 12 PM – 1:15 PM; program will start promptly at 12 PM
- Come early or stay late for the unique opportunity to meet the artists and Heart of the City design team. Open House: 11 AM – 12 PM and 1:15 – 2:30 PM.
About the Artists:
Rochester-based artist Eric Anderson’s work Wakefield is an evolution of his acclaimed work for the 2016 Rochester Prototyping Festival, The Artery, in which Anderson signaled real-time health events occurring at Mayo Clinic through a dynamic lighting installation. Wakefield is solely comprised of fog and light that emerge within the plaza at the moment of a life event. For Anderson, the work is a reminder to celebrate life in the context of Rochester’s remarkable network of providers caring for our local community and patients visiting from across the globe.
Ann Hamilton is widely regarded for an artistic practice whose projects, often linking text and textile, create conditions for shared experience and moments of deeply held common ground. In her work Aeon, Hamilton literally grounds us through an expansive work in Cold Spring granite whose tactile surface of carved letters form the ground plane, in a textual work that spans eras and geographies. Connecting here to there, now to then and one to many, Hamilton’s composition both reaches back in time, and connects us directly to Rochester’s present. As we walk, or move across, Aeon, we construct our own narratives of Rochester and time’s passage.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer seeks to democratize public space through unexpected, interactive experiences of light, sound, biometrics and collective agency. His work for Peace Plaza will provide overhead lighting that animates the voices of participants in real time. Through a series of public intercoms, any visitor to the plaza may speak, hear, or see their voice translated through the dynamic catenary network. The work also provides a platform to archive and share stories unique to Rochester and its civic realm.
Early in the development of concepts for Heart of the City, Chicago-based artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle stated, “I want to put sculpture to work.” His maxim signals the civic-scale ambition and impact of artworks being commissioned for Peace Plaza. Manglano-Ovalle is internationally hailed for technologically advanced works that crystalize our most confounding political and cultural narratives into iconic, beautiful form. His work, A Not So Private Sky, will serve as a civic marker, a poetic response to Charles Gagnon’s soon-to-be-restored Peace Fountain, and a symbolic beacon that brings us to the sky.