ART-PRESENTATION:Dream House-Dia Foundation

La Monte Young, a crucial figure in the historical emergence of Minimalist music, is among the most influential representatives of the American avant-garde. He began using sustained tones and expanded concepts of time in the 1950s and formulated the Dream House concept with Marian Zazeela in 1962. Together, they have developed numerous sound-and-light installations and performances, among which Dream House stands as the essential environment for their time-based performances.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Dia Foundation Archive

A unique version of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s Dream House, titled “Dia 15 VI 13 545 West 22 Street Dream House”, is on presentation at the DIA Foundation. Young and Zazeela created this new iteration in collaboration with their disciple, artist and musician Jung Hee Choi. The work includes a new configuration of its traditional elements: Young’s sine-wave sound environment and Zazeela’s light environment, and will incorporate a new version of Choi’s installation Ahata Anahata, Manifest Unmanifest IX . Dream House has been described as “a time installation measured by a continuous frequency environment in sound and light, in which a work would be played continuously and ultimately exist in time as a living organism with a life and tradition of its own”.  Understood as a durational work to be experienced several times over a lifetime, the first presentations of Dream House took place at Heiner Friedrich Gallery in Munich in 1969, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1971, and the yearlong presentation of Dream House at Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany, in 1972, it is a project that is experiencing space and time… work in progress… and continues today in different places…

 Info: Dia 15 VI 13 545 West 22 Street Dream House, Dia:Chelsea, 535–545 West 22nd Street, N. York, Duration: 16/6-24/10/15, Days & Hours: Thu-Sat: 14:00-00:00, www.diaart.org