'Hide & Seek' at MoMA PS1

John Hill

28. June 2018

All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects

Dream the Combine's Hide & Seek, the winner of the 2018 Young Architects Program, opened today at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. World-Architects visited at lunchtime today to take some photos and a video of the installation.

Dream the Combine's Hide & Seek was selected in March, when it was asserted the installation would "[enable] surprising connections throughout the adjoining courtyards of MoMA PS1." Movable mirrors would "move in the wind or with human touch, permitting dislocating views and unique spatial relationships across the space that foster unexpected interactions." Did those assertions hold true?

Even before entering the museum's courtyard, "Hide & Seek" makes itself known through a steel armature propped upon the concrete walls.

The first view once inside the courtyard is of a steel armature, bench, and overhead canopy.

The steel frame supports a large mirror that faces another mirror across the slightly elevated platform.

These mirrors, and those set an angle to them, make it hard to take a photo without it being a selfie.

The many mirrors invite people to move about the courtyard to see the various vistas that are opened up by the myriad reflections.

The small courtyard, often subsidiary to the large one, is home to more mirrors plus a hammock-platform beneath the canopy.

Another view of the small courtyard.

Reflections in the mirrors on either side of the hammock flooring.

What cannot be grasped in photos is what happens when a mirror moves. The steel frames allow people to move them up and down, and side to side, creating mesmerizing effects that can be captured in video (like the one below, in which I'm moving the mirror with my left hand and shooting with my phone in my right hand) but are best seen in person. The interactivity and Inception-like trippiness of Hide & Seek should make it especially popular during MoMA PS1's Warm Up music series, which starts during this weekend's heat wave.