A Human Glimpse of Cosmic Time
A Human Glimpse of Cosmic Time
by Allison Maria Rodriguez
Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station, NYC
detail from 42-channel public art video installation project (includes four 45′ primary screens and 38 additional screens of various sizes & shapes located throughout the station)
on view Oct 15, 2024 – Jan 14, 2025
(photos by David Plakke)
Artist Statement
This public art video installation is on 42 screens throughout Moynihan Train Hall in Penn Station, NYC. It includes the four 45′ long Main Train Hall Display screens as well as 38 additional screens of various sizes and shapes located throughout the station. The installation is on view from October 15, 2024 – January 14, 2025, taking over the entire station several times per hour.
This project explores and challenges our collective conceptualization of time through an unexpected evocation of the divine within the context of the everyday. A Human Glimpse of Cosmic Time transports neolithic sacred sites from the landscape of Northern Ireland into the modern transit epicenter of Moynihan Train Hall. These neolithic sites function as portals between worlds, and often were constructed to record the movement and cyclical nature of the heavens – astronomical time – while also conjuring access to a mystical, spiritual sense of time outside human understanding. The sites are also aesthetically composed by the artist to make reference to both the diversity and the repetition inherent in earth-time. Placed within a contemporary urban space specifically built and utilized in accordance with standardized time (railway time, a fairly new invention of modernity necessitated by mass transit) these quiet yet visually striking sites ask us to look outside the present moment – even for just an instant – to glimpse an interconnected existence larger than ourselves. This expanded view of time and place is also a direct response to the paradoxical moment of climate change, when both immediate action and deeper time thinking towards our role as future ancestors is necessitated. Through an evocation of human history, astronomy, divinity, and deep time the work asks us to shift perspectives, to shift our positioning in the world – if only for the blink of an eye.
commissioned by Art at Amtrak & Empire State Development
commission curated & produced by Debra Simon Art Consulting
All landscape/sacred site footage was filmed by the artist during a residency in Northern Ireland sponsored and supported by Digital Arts Studios, Belfast.
(VIDEO DOCUMENTATION & ADDITIONAL IMAGES COMING SOON)
