THE LOOP — The latest art installation aiming to "activate" Couch Place Alley will use water and light to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Chicago's sister city relationship with Hamburg, Germany.
"FLOW/Im Fluss" will be fired up between 5 p.m and midnight nightly from Wednesday to Sunday in the alley on the west side of State Street between Lake and Randolph streets, starting with a reception from 5-10 p.m. Wednesday night.
Lizzie Schiffman says Chicago and its sister cities make a pretty large family:
Beer and wine will be sold, and attendees who RSVP in advance to the launch party will get one free drink.
Early renderings of the piece designed by Luftwerk — the sculptural team of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, who also designed Millennium Park's light and sound-based Luminous Field — show backlit water droplets suspended in linear formations.
The piece was commissioned by the Chicago Loop Alliance as part of its ongoing "placemaking" initiative to bring traffic to underused corners of the Loop. "FLOW/ImFluss" is presented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Chicago and the Natural Resources Defense Council to commemorate Chicago's 1994 sister city partnership with Hamburg.
"Since both cities are located on rivers, FLOW is a gesture addressing the connectivity through water ways in general, while taking a closer look at the specific data readings of the two rivers, Elbe and Chicago River," Luftwerk’s Bachmaier said in a release last month.
Bachmaier and Gallero have lived in both Chicago and Hamburg, bringing extra meaning to the assignment, Bachmaier said.
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