Luke Willis Thompson Exhibits at NY’s New Museum

Walters Prize recipient, Auckland-based Luke Willis Thompson, 27, is one of 51 young artists participating in New York’s New Museum Generational Triennial, a “hotly anticipated” show which will explore the frontiers of digital technology, from the surveillance state to gaming culture.

Thompson’s work simply asks us to imagine being somebody else.

His twice-daily performance piece will take visitors on walks, pursuing one of his cast members and collaborators through New York in choreographed routes.

“You never really know which narrative you’re going to be immersed in,” Thompson says. “Some of them lead home, or to an idea of home, while others are designed to disorientate the audience.”

The work emerged from time spent visiting New York. “When I first came Michael Brown was still alive and when I left he wasn’t, so there is this sense of social change the cities are going through which I felt strongly had to be part of the work.”

Thompson was artist-in-residence at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt and with the Sa Sa Bassac Cambodia Exchange Project in Phnom Penh.

2015 Triennial: Surround Audience is on until 24 May.

Original article by Charlotte Burns, The Guardian, February 25, 2015.