Michael Rakowitz: Circumventions

To circumvent is to get around the rules, to find loopholes, to initiate idiosyncratic solutions, to employ subtle metaphor to highlight problematic situations. Michael Rakowitz does just that, combining architecture, design, agitational techniques and a poetic sensibility to create installations and performances that touch on issues of power, visibility and memory. His paraSITe shelters are custom-built tents for homeless people that attach to the hot exhaust vents of buildings, creating not only a heated abode but one much more visible than a cardboard box. Rise conducts the smell of Chinese pastries from a Chinatown bakery to the decidedly un-local art exhibition in an adjacent building. And in Minaret, Rakowitz uses an alarm clock bought in Jordan to broadcast the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, to a city where minarets are otherwise quieted.