The Whitney Museum is giving visitors a view of an astronaut’s life with a window art installation featuring three performers replicating the day-to-day activities aboard a space station — from bathing to peeing — 24/7 for 10 straight days.
For the piece, titled “Orbit,” the three women have been living in a 3-foot-wide, 36-foot-long space in a window of the Whitney’s Hess Theater.
They eat and sleep in the space, as well as bathe nude and relieve themselves in mason jars.
“The participants’ conditions partially emulate those of astronauts orbiting Earth: sleeping in scheduled rotations, receiving messages on a delay, exercising daily, and tracking their energy usage,” the Meatpacking District museum’s Web site says.
On Saturday, one of the artists used a towel and bowl of hot water for a kind of sponge bath. Another disappeared behind a curtained-off composting toilet and emerged with a jar full of urine, which she put on display.
Later, they gathered around a red metal container to eat what looked like porridge. They also did yoga, wrote in a journal, used a treadmill and drank tea.
They communicated with visitors only by occasionally blasting music, including salsa tunes, through a speaker.
The exhibit is a brainchild of artists Malin Arena and Amapola Prada, who will record their “energy usage,” according to the museum’s Web site.
The display left some visitors confused on Sunday.
“Are those jars of pee?” one woman gasped.
“I’m not entirely sure what’s going on,” grumbled Greg Saxton, 29.
Others took a stab at guessing the artists’ message. Some suggested climate change.
Karen Strauss, 56, guessed the artists were asking, “What would it mean to us if we all had to exist in small bubbles?”
“If they were trying to say something else, I didn’t get it,” Strauss added.
Museumgoer Julia Tiller, 30, assumed it must be about New York, the center of the universe.
“It’s perfect for New York. We’re all used to being in small spaces and having to get along,” she said.
“Orbit,” part of the artists’ four-part “MPA: Red in View” exhibition, opened Thursday and ends Feb. 19 with a finale titled “Assembly.”
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