Shelley and Paulson began building their wood and metal catwalk on Sept. 16, starting in the lobby of the museum, and they arrived last Sunday at the fourth floor, the end of their path. They carried everything they needed for all nine days, with their goal to never leave the platform.
Their installation, captured on a video taken of them working and living on the catwalk, will be on display at the museum through the end of the year as part of “Temporary Structures: Performing Architecture in Contemporary Art.’’
The show features 13 artists and collaboratives examining change in our built environment, using video, sculpture, installation pieces and performance art.
In the work provided by Vito Acconci, “Instant House,’’ four floor panels hold images of the American flag. But when a visitor sits in an attached swing, the panels are pulled up to surround the viewer, creating exterior walls that display images of Soviet flags.
For “Grow or Die,’’ Shelley and Paulson set up mesh bags, each filled with a day’s worth of food, along their route in advance. (“We bought really green bananas for the last few days,’’ Shelley noted.)
Twice, they didn’t reach that day’s food supply, so they had to subsist on leftovers. “If it had been two months, we would have become extinct,’’ he said.
They slept on sleeping bags at their “base station,’’ where they kept their clothes and other belongings. The museum was dark and quiet at night, the artists said, although they were startled early on by the appearance of a cleaner.
The act of creating “Grow or Die’’ and living on the catwalk for more than a week is “kind of a compressed model of a life,’’ Shelley said. “It sort of addresses all the questions that your life can address. ‘When I wake up in the morning, what do I do? Why do I do it?’ ’’
