Project Description

The McCarren Pool is an abandoned Works Project Administration Pool, located at McCarren Park, Brooklyn, New York where Art Attack presented a performance in 1992. The piece was inspired by the emptiness of what was once a thriving recreational site for a broad community to gather. The pool was constructed during the Great Depression and was designed to both provide jobs and a sense of community for an otherwise disparate and discouraged neighborhood. The architectural inspiration for the pool was the Karl Marx Hof in Vienna. Art Attack proposed a collaboration with the Messing Network, an artist collective in Vienna, to simultaneusly conduct a performance at the Karl Marx Hof, a structure also created to provide a community pool for less fortunate populations. The performance in Brooklyn featured explosives, fire, a single performance artist, two drummers and two people utilizing bull roarers and lasted for 15 minutes. The Karl Marx Hof performance was conducted simultaneusly and featured video projects on and of the structure, including interviews with people who were still living at the Karl Marx Hof at the time.

Participating Artists

• Adeboyega Adefope
• Esther Bell
• Steve Bennett
• Noel Clarke
• Brian Emrich
• Alberto Gaitán
• Evan Hughes
• Doug Miller
• Lynn McCary
• Isaac Pierre Racine
• Susi Schropp
• Atsushi Takakoa