PST Art Extravaganza to Start With a Colorful Bang
The New York Times
The artist Cai Guo-Qiang has designed an epic fireworks event for the Los Angeles Coliseum this September.
July 4 is over, but the fireworks here are not. The artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who designed the pyrotechnics for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, is developing what he calls a large “explosion event” for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Sept. 15. The spectacle will be the start of PST Art, a $20 million, Getty-funded museum collaboration.
Originally called “Pacific Standard Time,” PST Art consists of about 70 exhibitions developed by different Southern California museums and nonprofits, each featuring a topic or artist of its choice under a given rubric. The overarching theme of this edition, the third, is “Art+Science Collide.”
“The kind of work that Cai does is the quintessential collision of art and science — it’s literally explosive,” said Getty Trust president Katherine E. Fleming, describing the Chinese-born, New York-based artist’s history with gunpowder, artificial intelligence and drones. “And thousands of people will be able to see it.”
The September show, “WE ARE,” is set to take place in and above the Coliseum. Viewers will occupy the field area rather than the seats, where some 10,000 firework shells will be perched on bamboo sticks. Overhead, 2,300 drones will offer an early example of drone-launched pyrotechnics in the United States, which only this year began granting approvals for their use.
Free tickets, available later this summer, will be required for stadium entry, but most of the pyrotechnics should also be visible from within a two-mile radius.
“Because I worked on the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, I know that a venue like the L.A. Coliseum is a great place to hold a celebration,” Cai said by phone, via a translator, from his Frank Gehry-designed studio in Chester, N.J. “I’m thinking about a celebration of the hopes and successes of the human civilization, and I’m having A.I. play a role as my collaborator to help tell the story.”
