We are thrilled to announce Sebastian ErraZuriz's new public art piece
in Times Square every night of January with the support of Times Square
Alliance, PS122 and COIL15.
Times Square
Times Square is the number-one visited place globally with 360,000
pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million visitors a
year. This translates into $4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment
and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors in
New York City being spent within Times Square.
Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is
sometimes referred to as "The Crossroads of the World. Over 100
different sized and shaped giant screens compete for attention offering
services and products. The ads displayed simultaneously 24 hours a day
365 days a year are characterized by their short time frames, intense
colors, camera movements, fast editing and strong motion graphics. The
Times Square billboards and screens are the most coveted and expensive
and are only affordable by the biggest commercial brands.
A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps
“A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps” is a site-specific video
installation created by artist Sebastian ErraZuriz for Times Square. The
project is part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times
Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts. The video is
shown simultaneously in approximately 50 different screens within Times
Square.
The 3-minute video by Sebastian ErraZuriz contrasts with its environment
by being extremely slow paced and filmed exclusively in black and
white. There are no camera movements, no editing cuts and no motion
graphics. The video portrays a close up of the artist slowly looking
around him and yawning multiple times during the whole duration of the
video. The simultaneous projections of slow black and white images of
the yawning figure dominate and momentarily transform the environment of
Times Square. Many of the visitors looking at the screens find
themselves suddenly coerced into joining the artist in yawning,
consequently getting others around them to contagiously yawn too.
The video can be interpreted as a peaceful and personal act of protest
by the artist against the overwhelming market system that he is
surrounded by. The contagious character of the yawn video seems
purposely designed to get others to yawn with him and appear as if they
had voluntarily gathered every night to join the artist in his protest.
Sebastian ErraZuriz expressed that he hopes the video can offer a brief
moment of pause that can remind us of our urgent necessity for free
space and time that can allow us to recover a stronger sense of
awareness. When asked if the project was strictly criticizing the
market, he expressed he also finds himself tired of how the art market
in influencing much of the current artistic production.
"I'm yawning at everything and all of us; we need to wake up".
|
|
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento