Where:
Goethe-Institut Boston
170 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02116
Admission:
FREE
Categories:
Accessible Spots, Art, Music
Event website:
https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/sta/bos/ver.cfm?event_id=24667076
Studio 170, the Goethe-Institut Boston's artist-in-residence program, hosts artists/architects Aaron Powers and Stratton Coffman with their project Poly Pockets. Inspired by the new street uses that emerged during the pandemic, Poly Pockets is a public art installation in the form of a series of reconfigurable tent structures.
Aaron Powers (he/him, @aaeon_poeer) and Stratton Coffman (they/them, @bagstrat) are friends who collaborate on design projects. They both received Masters of Architecture from MIT in 2020. Individually and jointly their work has appeared at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Multimedia Anthropology Lab at UCL, and the Serpentine Pavilion in London.
During the pandemic, buildings turned inside out. Things that used to happen inside moved into the street. The tent became the enclosure of choice for this new zone, but it has been used almost exclusively for dining. Poly Pockets is a set of modifications made to generic tent materials to expand what the street tent can host and what is legally permitted and culturally desired within the street. A roll of poly sheeting is subdivided and sewn into pockets that take on versatile roles when stuffed with whatever is on hand. Sand or crushed aggregate to make weighted pockets. Insulation to make thermal mass bodies. Soft stuffing to make comfy pads for resting. Sheet material to make rigid planes. Or mostly anything else. Through cutting, stitching, attaching, and filling, the building enclosure is deconstructed into pockets with special talents that can be recombined and linked together into different formats, from piles to lean-to’s to columns to [ ].
Pockets Listening Session
Tuesday, May 16, 7-9 PM
Get comfortable among the pocket structures and piles with a drink, and relax to the sound of live ambient creations by local artists.
Visit outside of planned events
If you'd like to come have some personal time with Poly Pockets outside of our planned events, please book a rendezvous here.
Beyond just another gallery or concert hall, Studio 170 provides an open, lively place for inspiration, experimentation and open discourse. With this new format, the Goethe-Institut Boston invites New England artists from all fields of artistic practice to use our newly-renovated space to experiment, innovate, and connect with our international community.
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