Tiny Torture? Why are we just learning about the Flatland Project? Six artists have taken up a temporary 20-day residence in the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens. The bizarre 4-story structure they call home is only TWO feet wide...
Flatland: Ant Farm Living
FLATLAND tests the current fashion for glass-sheathed luxury residences against a more relentless kind of voyeurism overlayed with severe limits in space and time. The sublime openness of a Miesian glass box meets the chic claustrophobia of an Andrea Zittel Escape Vehicle. The utopian ideal of an artistic commune begins to resemble a lost hipster episode of MTV's The Real World. While Flatland calls to mind performance art of the 1970s, the endurance trials of David Blaine, and the fascinating allure of an ant farm, the project was actually inspired by an 1884 science fiction novella by Edwin Abbott Abbott.
We're not sure how everyone else feels, but we think it is silly to call this 2-Dimensional — it's just extremely limiting 3-Dimensional. And it's also extremely bizarre. There are a lot more pictures, including planning diagrams at the Flatland Project website. If they wanted more publicity for this, they should have built the structure outside in a high-traffic area, like Bryant Park. Did we mention this is really weird?
Via Gothamist.
Comments (13)
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I guess it wasn't possible to fit heating / aircon in this structure, that's why they buuilt it up inside ;)
view Jany's profile
I look at this and I have trouble breathing.
view Joan A.'s profile
In 1965 astronauts Jim Lovell and Frank Borman lived for fourteen days on the Gemini VII spacecraft which was the size of the front seat of a Volkswagen Beetle. They did it sitting down and wearing pressure suits the entire time. So 42 years later, the point of this is???
view Chris - Annapolis's profile
i just hate climbing ladders. hate it.
view buzzybee's profile
Ah, Art!
view kjs3's profile
Is it really that weird? Claustrophobia seems to be the point. They're all wearing orange -- get it?! Prison...the glass box is prison! Domestic efficiency is prison! I like the piece at Gagosian, a supersized scrawl that reads "Buy a condo or die."
view m's profile
I find I have no interest...
view Pixie's profile
Although the structure is interesting looking.
view Pixie's profile
cool! now my studio seems so spacious at 7' wide.
view carol's profile
why, just why?
view Martybird's profile
It's like the Real World meets the Hollywood Squares.
view David n DC's profile
call me weird, but i'd like to give a try living there. it feels kind of cozy to me...
view rasabasa123's profile
i think...ant farm, site, wright and disney.
no soup for you :)
view ion/?/'s profile