Bringing her fans together in person has always been important to Charli, as she explained to my colleague via email over the summer. “I think in-person spaces are really important right now,” wrote the pop star. “They strangely feel more human than ever before—probably because we’re all living our lives mostly online.” The energy at the Storm King event was dream-like and exciting, as fans and journalist, many wearing green, assembled within the triangular area where the sculpture formed a sort of amphitheater with a grassy slope, waiting for Charli to take her place in the DJ booth and play us previously unreleased remix tracks, like a new version of the song “Sympathy Is a Knife” featuring Ariana Grande.
For Nora Lawrence, Storm King’s artistic director and chief curator, welcoming Charli to the property was a no-brainer. “We were founded, actually, as Storm King Arts Center, with an S at the end. We’ve been doing music from the start, so there are a lot of ways in which we are not just providing a backdrop but an embedded experience of being here and doing something wonderful and harmonious,” she told me amid a crowd of young fans still dancing minutes after Charli had cruised off the scene in a black Escalade. “Something that I’ve always loved so much about being in interesting art spaces, is they do feel so different. It is so much about who you came with and what else happened that day. It’s not just about looking and observing from afar, but really being part of something.”
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The chance to expose a new audience to Storm King was an added bonus, and the staff thought carefully about where on the property to hold the event. In the end, it was decided that Charli’s installation, which will remain up through the weekend, would be placed in between four pieces by female artists, all innovators and disruptors in their own way.
Fans looking north from the event saw Alicja Kwade’s LinienLand, a massive grid with stone spheres that appear to be floating inside which was a new addition to Storm King’s collection this summer. To the south was Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield, an earthwork of rolling hills cut into the terrain. To the west, very close to all of the action, was Alice Aycock’s Three-Fold Manifestation II. Finally, to the east, was a piece from the Girl Group series by Arlene Shechet, whom, I can confirm, was in the crowd, and who told New York magazine that sharing a space with Charli XCX was “a perfect match.”
