Summary
- Amsterdam-based studio DRIFT closed out LACMA’s opening gala for the new David Geffen Galleries with “Franchise Freedom,” an aerial drone performance
- Composed of 1,000 drones flying above the museum, the piece mimics the flight rhythms of starling birds and muddies the lines of humans, nature and technology
LACMA just debuted its David Geffen Galleries, the new $742 million USD, 110,000-square-foot concrete home to its permanent collection. To kick off the Geffen Gallery era, the museum tapped Dutch art duo DRIFT to close out its opening gala and christen the Peter Zumthor-designed building with an aerial performance piece.
Titled “Franchise Freedom,” the piece lit up museum’s stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, transforming the sky into a living field of motion and light through 1,000 high-flyers in meditative choreography. Developed through two decades of researching starling murmurations, the machines were programmed to collectively mimic the flight path of bird swarms, bringing a certain poeticism and unity across the lines of humanity, nature and technology.
DRIFT, headed by Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, was first to the drone art game when they originally debut “Franchise Freedom” at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2017, and since its founding in 2007, has kept busy creating immersive installations, sculptures and installations that bridge the natural and the man made.
Akin to “Winds of Change,” another recent drone performance inspired by wind and oceanic patterns, “Franchise Freedom” finds rhythm and beauty in synchronized interdependence. “Whether standing beneath the expansive overhang of the museum or looking upward as the drone formation shifted across the night sky, viewers encountered a similar sense of scale, openness and awe,” DRIFT described in a recent statement.
For more on DRIFT, head to the studio’s website.
