Subscribe to WIRED Magazine

Navigate These Swinging Pendulums by Tapping Your Inner Cat Burglar

Gallery managers always say “don’t touch the artwork.” In this case they mean something a little bit different.

Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time No. 2, an installation by choreographer and artist William Forsythe, comprises some 400 swinging pendulums, suspended from an automated rig in an empty old marketplace in Brighton, England. You can think of it like a daunting booby trap or an elaborate heist movie security system. Just like Indiana Jones and Catherine Zeta Jones before you, the objective is to pass through unscathed.


The piece is one of Forsythe’s “choreographic objects,” artworks that provoke people to move–and to think about movement–in unusual and unexpected ways. The original version, first installed in 2005 in a warehouse near New York City’s High Line, engaged professional dancers to respond spontaneously to the unpredictable environment.

This new incarnation brings that challenge to the public. The work explores “the unconscious choreographic competence induced by choreographic situations,” tapping the innate ability we all have to predict and avoid.

The resulting dance, of course, will be shaped by the person dancing it. Some visitors to the Brighton Festival, where the installation is open through the end of the month, will take a deliberate approach, studying the arcs, angles and patterns for some sort of weakness. Others will just try to feel it out step by step. They won’t get any precious stones if they make it to the other side, but they won’t go to jail if they botch the job, either.