Why Rain Room in Sharjah is a perfect place to people watch
Unpredictable things can happen when people are in a dark room in which it is ‘raining’. They move cautiously. They look around, smile, take selfies, lots of selfies. Some couples even conduct a photo shoot. There is, of course, no manual for how to behave when it is ‘raining indoors’, when you’re, in fact, Rain Room, an art installation first seen at London’s Barbican in 2012, now permanently housed in Sharjah (in a cool grey building: stunning corridors, narrow, high, concrete — catacomb-ish minus the claustrophobia).
Rain Room is a darkened 450 square metre space with a big bright light. A portion of this space (98 square metres) is where the magic happens. The water falls around you. You can get wet, but mostly you don’t.
Nawar Ahmed Al Qasimi, Director of Development at Sharjah Art Foundation told me on the media day out, “A lot of people don’t expect that it’s actual water. So, they come in and think: oh, it must be an illusion, that because of the videos and photos, it must be a projection…”
How are you supposed to interact with this thing? Can you squeal inside Rain Room? Are you supposed to be silent? And what was it like for the 12 elderly visitors from the Sharjah Old People’s Home? What did they feel? What a touching, commendable idea to take the seniors first, by the way. Congratulations to whoever thought of that. There’s a lovely shot on Twitter of an elderly person in a wheelchair taking in the experience. We were told by the organisers, “Many of them (the elders) were happy and they asked their assistants to take them inside again.”
The credit is obviously due most to the artists of the group, Random International, who in their many projects routinely play with technology, and have engineered this indoor rain. We have an email chat with Hannes Koch and Florian Ortkrass, both German, friends from their days at the Royal College of Art. Edited excerpts:
How did you decide that Sharjah would have a permanent installation of Rain Room?
While launching the work for the first time in 2012 at London’s Barbican, Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi of the Sharjah Art Foundation and Gallerist Brigitte Schenk suggested to Klaus Biesenbach of New York’s MoMA to come and visit the installation. Klaus then made Rain Room part of MoMA’s EXPO1 exhibition in 2013, and we kept speaking to the Sharjah Art Foundation throughout. To be honest, we didn’t have to think twice as the Sharjah Art Foundation is simply the premier art institution in the Middle East and one of the best in the world. Why we feel that way? The way that they treat their artists and the way they show work, and above all, the topics they bring to the attention of their audiences are very relevant, courageous and important. No other offer (and there were a few!) could match that context.
Your observations of the visitors — have the reactions in all the cities where Rain Room has been installed been very different? What images of people have stayed with you over time and can you remember from which cities?
In an advanced economy like the UAE, people seem quite used to functionally perfect technology. Now Rain Room is a different beast, in that it deals with the unpredictability of people’s movement, and uncontrollable forces such as gravity. We felt that children find it a bit harder to trust a system like that, but once they witness that nobody seems to get wet, they’re going for it… and run so fast that they effectively outperform gravity, and… well, get wet. Absolutely soaked. Also, people assigning the absence of rain above them to the presence of individual body parts (“I’ve got magic hands!”).
Somebody in Los Angeles shoved their six-month-old baby into the actual rain (thus outsmarting the tracking) because it hadn’t ever experienced real rain. That was interesting! Hannes Koch and Florian Ortkrass, Random International
Or people fervently striding into the field of rain, expecting it to part like the Red Sea. And getting… well, you guessed right: soaked. Because of gravity. People in London seemed to have a natural feeling for how much time to spend inside the installation, whereas New Yorkers really, really liked to take their time in it. Somebody in Los Angeles shoving their six-month-old baby into the actual rain (thus outsmarting the tracking) because it hadn’t ever experienced real rain. That was interesting!
Has how you view your project, that perception, changed with time? And did you see Rain Room as a more artistic feat than an engineering one?
It was intended as a disembodied sculptural experience right from the start (the technology is merely something we developed to realise the artistic intention). In our view, it more and more grew into an increasingly public experience and it’s our job to select the best context to deliver the art to the people. And here in Sharjah, there’s nothing to add, we just love the way that it’s being presented and that it’s such a decidedly for-the-public iteration of the work, with comparatively low ticketing, and a generous and well architected space.
What aspects of Sharjah were you struck by?
The thoughtfulness of the Emirate stands out: architecturally, socially and culturally. It has a plethora of amazing museums, a curious public and sensibility towards the design of public space. We love the sheer openness and friendliness of people: we had no concerns whatsoever to give our brand new iPhone to a total stranger in order to shoot a photo of us both in front of the construction site. Kids are super open and connected to their surrounding it seems.
Who were your collaborators, people who made this possible?
A huge thank you to Mona El Mousfy, the architect of the incredible building, and Shape Architecture (the project architects), as well as Engineer Hassan from the Sharjah Art Foundation, and Gallerist Brigitte Schenk from Cologne for their superb work on the project. Our project lead and Rain Room engineer Federico Ciuffa and his team have been amazing in their realisation of the project install. Lastly, the studio is extremely grateful and humbled by the trust and resolve from Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi, and HH Dr Sultan Al Qasimi, without whose support a project like this could never come to fruition!