Volunteers Recreate Rome at the New Museum

A handful of volunteers joined Los Angeles-based artist Liz Glynn last night at the New Museum to help her rebuild Rome for her participatory performance work titled Building Rome in a Day. Sometime later this afternoon, Glynn and friends will have hopefully recreated the ancient capitol entirely out of the contents of a construction site's trash bin - namely cardboard and reclaimed building material.

They plan to follow the rise and fall of Rome, starting with "pagan revelries, seven empty hills and a spotty archaeological record" and finishing up with the decline and fall of Rome. Along the way, participants will have run into the typical challenges of late-night Roman architecture - fire, invasions, a lost Dominos delivery person overnight - in their quest to relive the glory days of human civilization.

To keep everybody sane, the project as a whole will be completed by five groups of volunteers. The late-nighters go home a little before 10:30 a.m. when the fourth batch of volunteers come in to lend a hand in assisting with the decline. By 2:30 p.m., the last batch will be all hands on deck to help knock Rome straight off its pedestal and back into the history books.

This performance is part of The Generational: Younger Than Jesus.