Jul 032015
 

Diller + Scofidio- Soft Sell

Walking by a small room on the third floor of the Hammer Building at LACMA, you may hear the voice from this video calling out to you with a series of questions that all start off  “hey you, wanna buy…?”. The choices range from the more abstract ideas of “a second chance” or “a piece of the American dream” to the more practical, like “a set of encyclopedias with a four color atlas”, to the more ominous options of “a judge” or “the mayor’s ear”.

The video was created by the team of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio working together as Diller+Scofidio.  Soft Sell was originally displayed in the windows of an abandoned porno theater on 42nd Street in NYC in 1993 and is currently part of LACMA’s photo exhibition titled Lens Work: Celebrating LACMA’s Experimental Photography at 50.

Diller and Scofidio added Charles Renfro as partner in 2004 to form Diller Scofidio + Renfro,“an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts”. They have designed many high profile projects including the first mile of the High Line in NYC, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Broad Museum, soon to be opened in Los Angeles.

More info:

This 2007 article from the New Yorker about Diller Scofidio + Renfro offers an interesting portrait of the group- http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/14/the-illusionists