Playgrounds are rare in the city, and ones sized for adults even more scarce.
But Ann Hamilton's installation "the event of a thread" at the Park Avenue Armory turns the massive, cavernous space into a forest of swingsets, perfectly placed for a couple to share in the long, slow arcs, or for a single person to feel like a kid again.
The entire scene has a steampunk quality to it. Gears and pulleys and guywires and weights connect all 42 giant swings to a billowing silken curtain that bisects the room--a huge silken parachute that ripples as if under ghostly influence.
As visitors play on the equipment, their movements jostle the connections, pulling and tugging the delicate fabric, and by extension, the other visitors on their own isolated, yet interconnected swings.
At one end, announcers-flanked by boxes of live pigeons-- read odd phrases into dated microphone stands, their words transmitted at random to speakers scattered around room disguised like sack lunches.
Hamilton began her career as a weaver, and the intricate strands that tie the entire piece together are a marvel of engineering and imagination. Many visitors simply lie on the floor beneath the curtain and stare at the ceiling, the rafters and each other.
Aside from any statements the piece makes about sound and loneliness and connection in a modern society, it is great fun.
For $12 ($10 for students), visitors can swing and lounge and listen and look for as long as they like, one of the cheapest and best dates available to a financially-strapped couple in this expensive city.
Children are ubiquitous, for many parents and caregivers bring them along. But they are used to such oddities. To them, every swing is large, and playtime often happens under a high roof.
But it is the adults who are transformed by the experiences, making out like teenagers or pushing each other ever higher on the sturdy yet slippery swings.
And perhaps that sight alone would be worth the trip, but luckily, "the event of a thread" offers much more.
The installation runs through Jan. 6 at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It is open from noon until 7 p.m. every day except Mondays. (212) 616-3930, armoryonpark.org