NYAB Venue - D R O N E

D R O N E

Gallery in The Lower Manhattan area

D R O N E is the corner of 1 Hudson St‬ at the mouth of the Chambers St Subway station abutting Bogardus Plaza. Face on, the vestibule spells in gold leaf D O E (as in John or Jane), but if you step slightly to one side D R O N E and its variants DONE, DR ONE, NOD, etc. materialize. Formerly an Italian restaurant, long ago a bank, D R O N E is home to exhibitions, performances, and other non-profit activities organized by Gryphon Rue.

Inside D R O N E, a voyeuristic moment. Sound rushes in and so does the draught – you’re exposed, as if standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Plate glass windows put you on display. Millimeters separate insiders and outsiders. Your thoughts and ambulations mix with the thrumming traffic, pops of skateboards, gabs of conversation, the constant scribble of the Chambers street chorus.

Scorched brick, Terrazzo floor, marble columns. The site was used for consumption of money, then for consumption of food. How long will it be a place for art? Indifferent to speculations, D R O N E lodges the machinations of appraisals and terms of use, selflessly submitting to gut renovations and changes of hand. Yet it has always been a site that sees.

D R O N E is not Old TriBeCa. D R O N E may be a Temporary Autonomous Zone. D R O N E is a stone’s throw from 33 Thomas St, a 550-foot windowless skyscraper and N.S.A. black site designed to withstand atomic attack.

Back to Zero. Just north of The World Trade Center site, D R O N E draws from memory to color perception. After 9/11, the world became hyperlocal and opaque. Special interests grew from scorched earth trauma – The invasion of Iraq, the War on Terror, the American intervention against ISIS, the architecture of data capture and invisible surveillance, the expansive monitoring of citizens by multifarious corporations.

What the Jains call ākāśa, the dark which has no end.