Thierry Costesèque – Filming Western

The core component of Thierry Costeseque’s residency was the production of a performance/action, Western, which consisted in riding on horseback down Broadway Avenue in New York City.

Initially, RU’s team conducted research to determine the feasibility of such an action and the challenges to be met in order to successfully execute the project. Primary concerns revolved around the difficulty of obtaining permits from the city. This obstacle was also considered part of the project, where in Costeseque would use the process of obtaining these permits in a creative manner as part of the project, if the permits were not granted. It turned out that there are no permits required to simply ride a horse on the street.

RU then identified Kensington Stables, located south of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, that rent out riding horses. A new challenge was then presented to the artist of properly riding a horse in the streets of New York, a task made to look easy to by the NYPD’s horse riding patrols, but by no means was this successful on the first try. The other challenge was for RU’s team to properly document the action. Filming a walking horse while on foot did not provide the best results, and as such, we resorted to placing a camera out of the trunk of a hatchback Toyota Matrix, and have the rider follow the car.

In the meantime, Thierry Costeseque took horse riding lessons to acclimate himself for the performance.

A portion of Broadway in Manhattan, going south from 31st Street at the end of Korea Town to 25th Street near the Flatiron Building, was identified as best suited for the action. RU Director of Operations, Sebastien Sanz de Santamaria and Thierry Costeseque scouted the area and time of the day to best film the performance.

The last phase of the production support will take place in the Spring 2015. RU will help Thierry with the post production editing of the film with support of the French Cultural Service in NEW York. The final version will be screened at RU.