The United States presidential election—and Halloween season—are about to get a bit spookier thanks to a new politically-themed haunted house installation conceived by the artist Pedro Reyes and commissioned by the New York-based non-profit Creative Time. Doomocracy, an interactive and immersive house of horrors, is due to open on 7 October at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in the Sunset Park neighbourhood of Brooklyn and run through 6 November—two days before the election. This “maze slash funhouse”, as Creative Time’s director Katie Hollander calls it, will play on contemporary fears, including gun violence, climate change and corporate influence, through a multi-storey installation that combines live performance, props and video.
Much of the setup is still in the works, but Hollander estimates that it will take visitors about 30 or 45 minutes to navigate the doomsday labyrinth, in groups of eight to ten participants—whose pathways will change depending on the choices they make in the different spaces. One room, for instance, modelled after a corporate boardroom, will require visitors to vote on plans to sell shares and lay off employees, and their answers will determine the next step in their visit. There will also be an on-site bar area so that visitors can discuss their journeys through the maze and the issues at hand (and perhaps unwind from the experience, which Reyes likens to “political catharsis”).
Creative Time has launched a Kickstarter campaign to support Doomocracy, which goes live on Tuesday, 30 August, with a goal of $80,000. This is the first time the organisation has turned to crowdfunding, since Reyes proposed the project relatively late in their planning schedule, but “it wasn’t something that could happen a year from now”, Hollander says. There is also the nice parallel between crowdfunding and fundraising for a political campaign.
Though the project is an exaggerated and satirical nightmare, it does speak to genuine and legitimate fears of the zeitgeist, Hollander says. “There’s a level of truth somewhere in there—and that’s the really, really creepy part,” she says.
