In the summer of 1975, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark broke into Pier 52, an abandoned warehouse on the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. He described the pier as 'an intact nineteenth century industrial relic of steel and corrugated tin looking like an enormous Christian basilica whose dim interior was barely lit by the clerestory windows fifty feet overhead.' Using hand-held tools, he and his helpers removed some heavy floor beams so the river below was exposed. They made cuts into the walls and roof of the warehouse. In this way movement and light entered the vast space so it became 'a sun and water celebration'. He named this project 'Day's Passing', and then 'Day's End'. Jane Duran's new book Pier 52 offers a remarkable response to and development of Matta-Clark's aesthetic, inspired by seeing the interdependence of disruption and invention; the radical creation of new spaces in existing constructs; the way removal can alter our perception of a whole structure, animating new vistas and aesthetics; the action of working with what is already there, preserving, recycling and transforming: all are present in his work and words. Duran's Pier 52 makes new spaces for its readers to think, whether revisiting 1970s Manhattan or noticing the closed spaces of Palestine now.
