(2015) Heide Fasnacht, Suspect Terrain

Socrates Sculpture Park partners with a local public high school, NYC’s Academy for Careers in Television & Film (ACTvF), to document the park’s Exhibitions and Public Programs through a student-created film series. An ACTvF class begins filming in the park each spring and continues through the end of the year to capture both the production and presentation of our exhibitions and programs.

This short film documents an interview with artist Heide Fasnacht during which she answers questions about Suspect Terrain, her sculptural interpretation of a sinkhole. In Fasnacht’s vision, the fragmentation span 50-feet above ground and is detailed in painted plywood — a stand-in for the cement, asphalt, and rock substrate that the sculpture maps. Fasnacht’s surface was inspired by striking media coverage and documentation of massive sinkholes, including the 26-foot-wide by 52-foot-deep 2013 pit created in the Shenzhen region of China and the 2010 occurrence in Guatemala City, Guatemala, that extended 60-feet-wide and approximately 30 stories deep. By sculpturally depicting these devastating geological occurrences, Fasnacht turns the relationship between event and documentation into a personal and precarious action.