First Triffids, Now Eerie Glowing Squares: The Public Art Invasion Continues

While this appears to be the result of a black ops warplane accidentally jettisoning its payload over Lake Anne on its way to an undisclosed location, it's actually Art, with a capital A. What looks like a bunch of glowing squares is actually an exploration of "individual and collective acts of building and un-building, measuring and marking space, and the fluidity and mutability of both water and bodies." Alrighty then!

A "site-situated installation and contemporary dance performance conceived by architect Ronit Eisenbach and dance artist Sharon Mansur, inspired by the history of the planned community of 1960s New Town of Reston, Virginia and the sculpture and architecture of Lake Anne Plaza," Out of Place debuts at 7:30pm next Saturday, April 28. The floaty glowy things will remain in the water through May 13. Co-sponsored by Reston Community Center, the Initiative for Public Art – Reston, Friends of Lake Anne and the Reston Museum, here's what to expect:

The dance performance, a duet featuring Mansur and longtime collaborator Daniel Burkholder, will take place on Lake Anne Plaza and will last for a half hour as daylight fades, activating the plaza through human actions and interactions, and drawing Eisenbach’s constellation of floating frames and tensile lines across the water. At night, the sun’s harnessed energy will transform these elements to create a landscape of luminous, hovering color in the lake. The installation will linger in the quay until May 13th delighting viewers with the memory of the duet—an architecture of situation marking temporal rhythms and reframing place.

Actually, it looks pretty cool. Like the Town Center Triffids, it's exciting to see that Reston is continuing its tradition of cutting-edge, if at times baffling (Serious Art Critics would instead say "challenging"), public art.


We, for one, welcome our artistic overlords.