The latest collaboration between architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and artist Ai Weiwei may be called Hansel & Gretel, but it brings to mind just as much another literary classic: George Orwell’s 1984.

© James Ewing

The latest collaboration between architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and artist Ai Weiwei may be called Hansel & Gretel, but it brings to mind just as much another literary classic: George Orwell?s 1984.The immersive, site-specific installation, located within the expansive Wade Thompson Drill Hall at New York?s Park Avenue Armory, places visitors in a darkness-cloaked environment, where your every move is tracked and monitored by motion sensors, image captures and a team of surveillance drones. The work is a not-so-subtle interpretation of the expanding role of surveillance in modern-day society and the changing dynamics between the public and private realms. 
© James Ewing

?Hansel & Gretel extends dynamic creative synergies that exist between the practices of Jacques, Pierre, and Weiwei and adds a new dimension to the imaginative, monumental work they?ve created together,? explains Pierre Audi, the Armory?s Artistic Director. ?Weiwei is an artist who has an innate understanding of the impact that built environments have on the artistic experience?as well as the direct experience of being watched 24/7.  Jacques and Pierre bring deep experience of the emotional interplay be...