KIPS BAY — The East River Ferry will take on a new role as waterway art gallery on Saturday night as it takes part in New York City’s second annual Nuit Blanche festival.
The event is a free, one-night-only contemporary art festival, beginning at 6 p.m. and ending at midnight, that invites artists to create works of art in public spaces, said Ethan Vogt, executive director of the festival. It was created in Paris about 10 years ago and is now replicated in cities around the world on the same night each year.
The installations are concentrated in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, so the East River Ferry will serve a dual function on Saturday night, carrying festival-goers back and forth across the river and hosting an installation titled “Splitting Image.”
To accommodate the festival’s late hours and the thousands of people likely to attend, the ferry will run until midnight on Saturday (as opposed to its normal 9 p.m. shutdown time) and will travel from Manhattan at East 34th Street to Greenpoint and Williamsburg and then circle back again, said Paul Samulski, who works on creative projects and marketing for the ferry.
All the while, the video project from New York-based artist Alex Villar will be running on a large video screen set up on the ferry.
The piece features side-by-side footage meant to juxtapose an average ferry commute with an extreme one.
The screen showing the average commute will feature scenes likely familiar to those inside the boat, those who make a habit out of obeying the rules of ferry service, Samulski said.
The other screen will show the same commute from an edgier perspective.
For that more rebellious footage, the artist did things like strap himself to the side of the ferry as it made the trek across the East River or board the ship by leaping from the loading pier onto the boat rather than using the ramp, Samulski said.
He had to obtain special security and safety clearances to get the kind of access he had, Samulski said, and some of his plans had the crew a little unnerved.
“If traveler A, B or C tried it, I don’t think they’d get very far,” he added with a laugh.
The East River Ferry launched in June, and since then, Samulski said the response has been strong.
It’s a mode of transportation for New Yorkers and tourists, he said, but the company is also aiming to engage with the community. Samulski said it is looking to partner with local businesses for different projects in the future. The festival, too, seemed like a perfect fit.
“This is exactly the sort of thing we wanted to become a part of,” Samulski said.
