An artwork has the choice of two fates. One is to live in cold storage, a safe zone, fully insured. It has travel companions and guardians and is rarely on view for a public encounter — and rarely encounters other works of art. The second claims a life of activity, travels the world in its own shipping container, enjoys cultural diversity, locals, and international guests, and collects a patina of time and use.

Arena was designed for an itinerant life: it comes apart easily, packs up easily, unpacks easily, installs and deinstalls quickly. Its cycle is about fluidity and flexibility. Its 4 × 4 meter modular components are interchangeable, which allows different parts of Arena to be in many places at once, if so desired.

Arena becomes an arena when animated by people in an ongoing and open process that is punctuated by choreographed engagements. For the duration of the presentation at Dia Beacon, an expanding body of artists, performers, writers, musicians, and dancers activated physical and virtual spaces as part of a series of engagements with Arena. The series, collectively called Momentum, was initiated by Rita McBride with experimental performance collective discoteca flaming star (founded by Cristina Gomez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer) and artist and choreographer Alexandra Waierstall.

Momentum was active at Dia Beacon on the following dates: September 9, 2023, October 13–15, 2023, February 24, 2024, May 10 & 12, 2024, October 25–27, 2024.

This website collects documents from these events, hosted on a series of ** Are.na channels, and runs on a schedule generated daily. The schedule ensures that every visitor to the website views the same material at the same time.

Schedule   Colophon

Complete Arena digital fabrication files are available to download under a Copyleft license below.