Installation view of The Murder of Crows (2008) at The Park Avenue Armory. Photo credit James Ewing.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s The Murder of Crows (2008), a multidimensional installation from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection, Madrid, is on view at the Park Avenue Armory through September 9, and uses the venue’s massive facility to maximum dramatic effect. Known for their collaborative aural projects, as well as Cardiff’s own celebrated 40-Part Motet (2001), the Berlin- and Canada-based Cardiff/Bures Miller team produced this current work, their largest to date, at a watershed personal moment in their lives: 6 months spent in Katmandu, Nepal, attempting to adopt their daughter Aradhana, now 5. The loftiness and uncertainty of this time are expertly translated into this work, whose 98 separate speakers literally envelop the viewer and recount a “sound play.” Based on Cardiff’s own dreams, with inspiration from Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799, from the etching series “Los Caprichos),  this “play” is a mesmerizing feat that effectively conveys the sublime breadth of human nature – its nightmarish weaknesses and divine abilities.

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