Goings On | 05/18/2020 – Franklin Furnace

Contents for May 18, 2020 (Scroll down for more information):

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1. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at http://vimeo.com/61220687 and more
2. Ulises Carrión, FF Alumn, now online at ISLAA.org
3. Warren Neidich, Joan Jonas, FF Alumns, in The New York Times now online
4. Norm Magnusson, FF Alumn, live on www.RadioKingston.com May 18
5. Judith Bernstein, FF Alumn, now online at venusovermanhattan.com
6. Lucy Sexton, FF Alumn, in The New York Times now online
7. Judy Dunaway, FF Alumn, publishes new book with Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Connie Beckley, John Cage, Peter Frank, Julia Heyward, Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumns
8. John Held, Kristine Stiles, FF Alumns, now online at youtube.com
9. Lucy Lippard, John Baldessari, Ray Johnson, Clemente Padín, FF Alumns, in The New Yorker now online
10. Raquel Rabinovich, FF Alumn, now online at fronterad.com
11. Stephanie Brody Lederman, FF Alumn, now online at CooperHewitt.org
12. Jeff McMahon, FF Alumn, named Professor, Arizona State University
13. Joseph Nechvatal, Rhys Chatham, FF Alumns, now online
14. Annie Lanzillotto, FF Alumn, spring news
15. Patricia Miranda, FF Alumn, online at https://www.artstroll.com/es/exhibitions/ and more
16. Soojakim, FF Alumn, live online tonight
17. Pablo Helguera, FF Alumn, live online May 27
18. Marilyn R. Rosenberg, FF Alumn, in Artists Book Reviews
19. Jenny Holzer, Xaviera Simmons, FF Alumns, at Times Square Arts, Manhattan and more

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Weekly Spotlight: Irina Danilova & Steven Ausbury FF Alumns, now online at https://franklinfurnace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17325coll1/id/36/rec/2

Irina Danilova and Steven Ausbury’s 1999 “MIR is Here!” performance appropriates two common paradigms from outer space – “Space Walks” and “Space Stations” and redeploys them in urban situations. When the performers broadcast press conferences “from Space” the early Internet video transmission quality of this 30-minute event imitates current live video broadcasts from Mir.

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1. Paul Zelevansky, FF Alumn, now online at http://vimeo.com/61220687 and more

TO THE GREAT BLANKNESS MAILING LIST:

STILL KEEPING IN TOUCH.
HOPING YOU ARE ALL SAFE AND WELL.
ANOTHER PAIR OF SHORT VIDEOS FROM
“MISTER ROGERS FOR ADULTS”
http://vimeo.com/61220687
https://vimeo.com/80086920

PZ, 5/12/20

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2. Ulises Carrión, FF Alumn, now online at ISLAA.org

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) is pleased to share with you Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster. Click below for a virtual tour of the first in the new series of exhibitions at the ISLAA space in New York City, curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin.

WATCH ONLINE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVr5q8SLCnM&feature=youtu.be

Ulises Carrión (1941, Mexico – 1989, Netherlands) was a pioneering figure in mail art, a movement and a medium that produced a unique international network of creative exchange in the 1970s and 1980s.

The exhibition, which was held from November 2019 to March 2020, is accompanied by a richly illustrated exhibition brochure featuring essays by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Director and Chief Curator of Visual Arts at Americas Society, and Dr. Zanna Gilbert, senior research specialist in the Getty Research Institute’s curatorial department, discussing the genesis and main projects of Carrión’s visionary, monumental work with mail art.

ONLINE PUBLICATION https://issuu.com/islaa/docs/-brochure_1-u-carri_n-191030__1_

Ulises Carrión: The Big Monster is the first of ISLAA´s new exhibitions program on modern and contemporary Latin American art. These exhibitions respond to ISLAA’s mission to advance arts from Latin America and to support future generations of experts on Latin American art. The exhibitions draw from ISLAA’s library, archive, and graphic arts collection, which are currently being catalogued. The guest curators work closely with our team of archivists to classify and study the materials.
Special thanks to The Estate of Ulises Carrión for all the collaboration provided.
#islaa_archive; #islaa_carrion; #islaa_bigmonster; #theestateofulisescarrion

Our thoughts are with everyone who is being affected by
the current health situation and we hope
you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.

VISIT OUR WEBSITE https://www.islaa.org

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3. Warren Neidich, Joan Jonas, FF Alumns, in The New York Times now online

Please visit this link:

Thank you.

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4. Norm Magnusson, FF Alumn, live on www.RadioKingston.com May 18

Norm Magnusson, FF Alumn, live on the air on Radio Kingston, Monday May 18, 10pm to midnight on “The ArtLife with Chris Wells”. Chris Wells, founder of The Secret City art revival, will be interviewing Norm about his new “Pandemic Heroes” ‘historical’ marker as well as many other facets of his artistic career. Tune in online to listen live on www.RadioKingston.com or, in the Kingston, NY broadcast area, turn your dial to1490AM or 107.9FM. Visit Norm’s website at www.funism.com for more info about his newest project.

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5. Judith Bernstein, FF Alumn, now online at venusovermanhattan.com

https://www.venusovermanhattan.com/media/video/conversations-judith-bernstein

Now Live: Judith Bernstein

Venus Over Manhattan is pleased to present an online viewing room of work by Judith Bernstein. Comprising an important and historic group of works on paper, the presentation will be on view from May 11 – June 11, 2020. The presentation marks Bernstein’s first solo presentation and third project with the gallery, following “CUNT,” in 2017, and “Boxes,” in 2019. As a lifelong activist, Bernstein’s work has long worked to confront sexual and political inequities and injustices. After receiving her M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art, Bernstein moved to New York, where she helped to found A.I.R. Gallery, the first gallery in the United States to be cooperatively owned and operated by women. She has also been involved with the Guerrilla Girls, a group of radical feminist artists dedicated to fighting sexism and racism in the art world, since the group’s founding in 1985. Shortly after arriving in New York, Bernstein developed a signature style that was both confrontational and instantly recognizable: her work routinely featured large, charcoal renderings of black and white screws, suggesting mechanized phalluses. Her first first solo exhibition comprised monumental drawings of these screws, notable for their scale and her energetic handling of charcoal. This presentation focuses on Bernstein’s mastery of charcoal, a notably fugitive material that can be uniquely difficult to control. It features a pair of Bernstein’s earliest screw drawings from the first moments of her career, as well as a later drawing that showcases her recent use of similar imagery. The presentation also includes two large-scale “word drawings,” in which the words “Female” and “Yes” are scrawled with vigorous charcoal marks.

For further information about the exhibition and availability, please contact the gallery at info@venusovermanhattan.com
For all press inquiries related to the exhibition, please email press@venusovermanhattan.com

Conversations:
Judith Bernstein

LISTEN HERE https://www.venusovermanhattan.com/media/video/conversations-judith-bernstein

On April 23rd, 2020, Judith Bernstein and Alison Gingeras spoke with Anna Furney about Bernstein’s career. They discuss her time at Yale in the 1960s, her first solo-exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery, and what it means to be a Feminist artist.
Judith Bernstein is an artist living and work in New York City. She joins the conversation from her loft on the Lower East Side, where she’s lived for more than 50 years.
Alison Gingeras is a curator and writer. She has held positions at numerous institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou and the Palazzo Grassi. She joins the conversation from her home in Brooklyn.C
Anna Christina Furney is partner at Venus Over Manhattan. She moderated this conversation

DOWNLOAD HERE https://www.venusovermanhattan.com/publications/conversations-judith-bernstein

Conversations is an ongoing production from Venus Over Manhattan, where artists, writers, critics, academics, and familiars come together to talk about art. Each conversation is published as an audio recording made accessible the gallery’s website, and accompanied by a PDF that features a transcript of the conversation.

Listen along at #ConversationsVOM

Previous Exhibitions:
Judith Bernstein
CUNT
Judith Bernstein, VALIE EXPORT, Dorothy Iannone, Marilyn Minter, Carolee Schneemann, Betty Tompkins
July 15 – September 2, 2017
Venus Over Los Angeles

“The history of women in art has been, in large part, the history of women as subject or as muse. The artists included in CUNT make work that runs counter to this dominant history, asserting instead that women can be both image and image-maker.”

Boxes
The Art Show, hosted by The ADAA
The Park Avenue Armory
February 28 – March 3, 2019

“Box is a lovely principle that carries a lot of symbolic beans.” – Lucas Samaras, 1972

Copyright © 2020 Venus Over Manhattan, All rights reserved.
Venus Over Manhattan
980 Madison Avenue
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10075

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6. Lucy Sexton, FF Alumn, in The New York Times now online

Please visit this link:

Thank you.

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7. Judy Dunaway, FF Alumn, publishes new book with Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Connie Beckley, John Cage, Peter Frank, Julia Heyward, Lucio Pozzi, FF Alumns

Please visit this link:

https://online.ucpress.edu/res/article/1/1/25/109397/The-Forgotten-1979-MoMA-Sound-Art-Exhibition

Thank you.

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8. John Held, Kristine Stiles, FF Alumns, now online at youtube.com

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

in case you missed it or would like to recall: we invite you to visit the complete online documentation of the last “real” conference held before the time of pandemic, where – with the participation of splendid colleagues – we could discuss some topics of art archives and networks in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest on February 20-21.

Artpool40 – Active Archives and Art Networks
International Conference of the Artpool Art Research Center
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2ZvbSrxOwZQlJjiS2r60qGys3q3vtb0q

At the above link you can access the complete documentation of the conference, the video recordings of the lectures and discussions and a photo gallery

Just published in Artmargins: article by Polina Baitsym on our Artpool 40 conference:
The Art of Self-Reflection: Artpool 40 Conference in Budapest

Best wishes from the Artpool team,

Julia Klaniczay

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9. Lucy Lippard, John Baldessari, Ray Johnson, Clemente Padín, FF Alumns, in The New Yorker now online

Please visit this link:

https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/spotlight-pushing-the-envelope

Thank you.

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10. Raquel Rabinovich, FF Alumn, now online at fronterad.com

Please visit this link:

Interview Questions for Raquel Rabinovich

Thank you.

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11. Stephanie Brody Lederman, FF Alumn, now online at CooperHewitt.org

Please visit this link:

Prioritizing Image Descriptions and Digital Equity

Thank you.

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12. Jeff McMahon, FF Alumn, named Professor, Arizona State University

Jeff McMahon, FF Alumn, has been promoted from Associate Professor to Professor at the School of Film, Dance and Theatre (soon to be the School of Music, Dance and Theatre) at Arizona State University. Very gratifying, and I’m grateful to the many people who served as reviewers and committee members and on and on in the byzantine process. And a special shout-out to the Furnace’s very own Martha Wilson who has been so supportive for so long.
www.jeffmcmahonprojects.net

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13. Joseph Nechvatal, Rhys Chatham, FF Alumns, now online

an excerpt of Joseph Nechvatal’s viral-modeled artificial life animation Viral Venture (2009), created in collaboration with Rhys Chatham and Stéphane Sikora, is being exhibited here online
http://www.fuorivisioni.com/wpg-977236-557953.html
now by the White Page Gallery / Fuori Visioni art center in Piacenza, Italy.
Piacenza is one of the Northern Italian cities with the world’s largest coronavirus outbreaks.

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14. Annie Lanzillotto, FF Alumn, spring news

Yo everybody!

I hope you are all strong strong strong.

News:
a. SOLO PERFORMANCES on ZOOM
Thursdays 6/18 and 6/25 I will perform for the RE-IMAGINE FESTIVAL.

Register for tickets now. (Limited to 75 tickets)
Tickets are free but require registration, for head count and security.
Spread the word.
This will be short and sweet, 20 minutes of performance, and discussion.
Invite your friends.

b. WRITING WORKSHOPS
I am teaching writing workshops on ZOOM, called: “DIG IN.”
The format is groups of 6 from anywhere in the world.
$75/month each, for weekly 2 hour workshops.
If you know anyone shopping around for a writing mentor or class, send them my way.
Private sessions available and book manuscript coaching/editing.

c. STILL LIFE PAINTING COLLECTION
When I sat down to paint still lifes of lemons, it was during my loneliest hours. Wildly, now, the paintings are selling, printed on a myriad of objecst; and bringing joy and community. I’m hearing from people I haven’t heard from in years… spirits uplifted by the lemons and oranges– juicy fruity joy. Here’s a couple of links to make it easy to share. Please share with friends. Lemons lift spirits!

Annie Lanzillotto Face Masks: Finally a Tablecloth for your mouth!

Okay, that’s all the news that’s fit to print as they say….

forever,
Annie

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15. Patricia Miranda, FF Alumn, online at https://www.artstroll.com/es/exhibitions/ and more

Each night at 7pm in my Washington Heights neighborhood and around NYC we throw open our windows, cheer, play drums, and make general noise in support of front line workers, hospitals workers, grocers, pharmacists, those who deliver goods and those who teach. Video conferencing has turned our living rooms to the world, making this hidden work visible as the domestic becomes public. My hope is that this new visibility of under-appreciated labor brings change, safety nets, health insurance and fair wages.

Let’s take this to heart and to action, and realize that much of our society is run by folks who are not reasonably compensated, financially and socially, for their essential work. These are things that together we can work for.

Artists, as always, fall between the cracks of categories. I imagine a new WPA as a way to address the inequities in our field, as well as to bring the beauty of art and talent of artists to our communities in peaceful meaningful ways.

Healing and Community: Community, Connection, Reflection
an Online exhibition for Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA)
https://www.artstroll.com/es/exhibitions/
I am honored to curate the first online exhibition for NoMAA, featuring artists from Uptown Manhattan- Washington Heights, Inwood, and El Barrio. Curating in this community has been my most meaningful experience during quarantine, helping to showcase the diversity of uptown arts.

I will be leading a Curator’s Walk on Wednesday, May 20, at 7:30pm.
There was a wonderful artist talk on May 6. You can watch live or recorded on the NoMAA FB page. NoMAA has taken the Uptown Arts Stroll online with these great weekly StayHomeOpenStudios featuring uptown artists.

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16. Soojakim, FF Alumn, live online tonight

Quand l’art tisse la ville
When Art Weaves the City
May 18, 2020 – 9pm GMT (11pm, Paris time), on French TV channel France 3 Nouvelle Aquitaine https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/nouvelle-aquitaine/tv/direct/noa
Gilles Coudert’s film, narrated by the actor Charles Berling, portrays a dialogue between contemporary creation and cultural heritage for the new art event Traversées organized by the City of Poitiers in 2019-2020. Placing Poitiers on the international art map, the inaugural edition of Traversées, directed by Emma Lavigne and Emmanuelle de Montgazon, is a city-wide invitation offered to one artist. Immersed in a new setting, that of a city steeped in history, Kimsooja transforms historic sites into sensorial experiences, with more than ten large scale site-specific installations and four video performances. As part of the event, Kimsooja has invited other artists whose work resonates with her own to observe the city and to contribute their own perspectives. Based on the notions of weaving and sharing that have characterized Kimsooja’s entire oeuvre, the film shows how Traversées is an invitation to embark on a kaleidoscopic journey around the world to the rhythm of installations, concerts and performances. The artists talk about their project, their relation with the city and their production process. The visitors become wanderers, roaming the myriad paths between the works of art, splintering and intertwining, generating both a sense of disorientation and opportunities for discovery, establishing links between past and present.
INVITED ARTISTS
Sammy Baloji/ Democratic Republic of the Congo / Belgium / Myriam Boucher, Canada / Compagnie l’Homme Debout, France / Ensemble 0, France / Thomas Ferrand, France / Subodh Gupta, India / Jung Marie, South Korea / Lenio Kaklea, France / Greece / Tadashi Kawamata, Japan / France / Kimsooja, South Korea / USA / France / Lee Mingwei, Taiwan / France / Min Tanaka, Japan / Tomoko Sauvage, France / Japan / Achilleas Souras, United Kingdom / Greece / Stephen Vitiello, USA / Rirkrit Tiravanija, Germany, Thailand/ and more
Original sound track by Xavier Roux, additional sound tracks by the artists Myriam Boucher and Tomoko Sauvage.
A Film by Gilles Coudert
Production: a.p.r.e.s productions / France Télévisions and the participation of the City of Poitiers

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17. Pablo Helguera, FF Alumn, live online May 27

Life Lessons #1: Pablo Helguera & Vidya Shivadas | Experimenting Within Institutions
Wed, 27 May 2020 | 8–9pm

As part of AAA’s twentieth anniversary, we are launching Life Lessons, a new series that enquires into models for education led by artists. We ask: What was the most influential lesson they learned in school? And how have they, in turn, passed on what they learned about forms of knowledge and care to their students or communities of learners?

Given the current health crisis, we are pushed to imagine new structures for education, community, and care. Scheduled for spring 2020 to spring 2021, Life Lessons is a series of online and offline conversations and workshops with artists, art collectives, and creative practitioners who teach at universities, build educational programmes at arts organisations, and run their own schools. Each session addresses their unique teaching methods.

The first session includes artist Pablo Helguera and curator Vidya Shivadas, who have been committed to experimenting with pedagogical models within institutions. Helguera and Shivadas test forms and strategies of teaching for both “permanent” and “temporary” structures: Helguera has been leading adult education programmes at established museums and writing about the education of socially engaged art, while Shivadas has developed art educational models for universities, arts organisations, and biennials.

This series is part of AAA’s ongoing research about the role of artistic pedagogy and art schools in the development of modern and contemporary art in Asia and beyond.

Pablo Helguera is an artist who combines performance, visual art, community outreach, and political activism to examine the social and cultural function of conventional teaching and memory systems. Helguera has been Director of Adult and Education Programs at The Museum of Modern Art since 2007. Previously, he was Senior Manager of Adult Programs at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1998–2005), and Manager of Public Programs at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1996–98), among other positions. He is the author of many books, including Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011).

Vidya Shivadas is a curator and director of the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) in Delhi. She focuses on creating links between academia and private institutions and develops pedagogical models for young artists, writers, and developers of public art projects and spaces. Shivadas has been a visiting faculty at School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University Delhi, since 2013. She was a faculty for the Post Graduate Diploma in Modern & Contemporary Indian Art & Curatorial Studies at Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2013–17).

This event is part of the AAA Learning and Participation Programme, supported by the S. H. Ho Foundation Limited.

Venue: Zoom

This programme will take place online. Please register here
https://www.anpasia.com/public/event/RegistrationForm/41425F477842445B4B71?utm_campaign=default&utm_content=link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ApsisPro

and we will send you the Zoom Meeting ID and password.

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18. Marilyn R. Rosenberg, FF Alumn, in Artists Book Reviews

Artistsbookreviews@gmail.com REVIEW by Levi Sherman
False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered
BY Marilyn R. Rosenberg
2019
Post-Asemic Press
6 × 9 in.
102 pages
Binding: Perfect
Digital offset
Open edition

False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered is a work of asemic writing, meaning the text communicates through aesthetics rather than semantics. Asemic writing is to poetry as scat is to jazz. It’s up to the reader to make meaning from the marks, which is true of any text to some degree. As the title suggests, Rosenberg embraces this indeterminacy throughout the book’s content and structure, although she does include a helpful statement in the back matter. As an object, the book is unremarkable – a perfect-bound codex with decent quality printing. A nice drape in the pages keeps most of the content out of the gutter. Yet the reader can almost feel the texture in the original pages from which this book was scanned and printed. Perhaps surprisingly, this black and white paperback makes for a wonderful and democratic access point to an artist whose one-of-a-kind artists’ books and two-dimensional works revel in color and texture.

There is a visual similarity between Rosenberg’s asemic mark-making and abstract expressionism, but it is clear that the pages of this book are filled with writings, not drawings. Even the loosest compositions with wild, gestural marks are scaled to the hand, not the arm. Such pages are balanced by others sporting orderly grids of ideograms, which have the appearance of a real, but untranslated writing system. Perhaps these are the Apollonian and Dionysian poles that influenced abstract expressionism, but False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered inhabits the entire spectrum between them. This impressive variety is unified by the book’s grayscale production as well as the written-ness of the marks, many of which are visibly the result of calligraphy pens and brushes.
The book format is a powerful vehicle for unifying disparate content, and False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered also incorporates found materials, collaged onto the pages. The edition is produced from scans of a single sketchbook, although it is more than a facsimile of an original. The digitization process is transformative. Everything is flattened – positive and negative, addition and subtraction. What look like hole-punched portals into the following page are actually onlays from some other hole-punched paper. The edges of the scanned original recede into a dark margin, an absence that signifies like presence on the page, mirroring Rosenberg’s dark marks on the light paper. Washers and key rings are no more dimensional than the fore-edge of the scanned original, whose pages form vertical margins on the outside of many spreads, marking the reader’s progress through a book they aren’t actually reading.

Of the three-dimensional objects included in the book, only the fish – a recurring motif – are mentioned in Rosenberg’s statement, which says they represent “groups, family or specific personalities.” Other objects seem to point to the material presence of language, like what appear to be bracelet charms stamped with letters and symbols. Likewise the stenciled word “yes” is a jarring injection of semantic content, although it remains open to interpretation. Rosenberg does contextualize the work as conversation, which helps ground the reader without foreclosing possibilities. She writes that the verso and recto are engaged in a cross-gutter dialogue, but the book offers a multiplicity of sequences and structural relationships.
In addition to the cross-spread dialogue, there is also the sequence of one page to the next. The hole-punched portals mentioned above are just one example of Rosenberg’s thoughtful engagement with the way a page reveals and conceals. These potent relationships are doubled since the book can be read from either direction, enabled by facsimile covers that separate the front and back matter from the core content of the book. Circular reading is a hallmark of Rosenberg’s books, and neither direction seems more or less important thanks to the non-representational content. Other, latent sequences are present, but not fully accessible to the reader: the sequence of the hard copy original, and the order in which Rosenberg filled it. Thus False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered is a book with four sequences, plus whatever order the reader chooses. The compositions are largely self-contained, making random access almost as rewarding as reading cover to cover.

Indeed the book speaks more to the act of creation than plot or narrative. The occasional glimpses of the background behind the scanned book reinforce this, revealing the stray marks of an artist’s work area rather than the expected clean white backdrop. Rosenberg represents, or rather presents, myriad relations between the author and the blank page, from confident flow to crossed out self-doubt. This emphasis on creation doesn’t diminish the reader though, since reading asemic writing is itself a generative act, the making of meaning. Perhaps it is this decentering of the author that most distinguishes Rosenberg’s approach from abstract expressionism. She blurs the line between reception and production just as she does writing and drawing. Likewise the book complicates the signal-noise binary, extending authorship not only to the reader, but to the chance operations of the scanning process. A handful of bright white marks remind the reader that book’s pages are toned from its printing, not its paper, emphasizing the transformative role of the digitization and one-color printing.

False Fiction Fractured Fact Altered certainly sounds like a title for the post-truth era, but asemic writing is not a total absence of meaning – the meaning is just located beyond the semantic order. This book asks the reader to consider other possibilities and perspectives. It demands sensitivity and empathy, but offers truths to the reader who is willing to work for them. This touches on a larger debate within asemic writing, where a complete absence of meaning (asemia) is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, Rosenberg posits multiple, perhaps infinite, meanings, and invites the reader to change those meanings from one reading to the next. Through its thoughtful consideration of the book form, False Fiction Fractured Fact Alteredbrings these debates into dialogue with artists’ book discourse. It is an impressive work in this exciting zone of intersection, but by no means does it exhaust the possibilities it points to.

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19. Jenny Holzer, Xaviera Simmons, FF Alumns, at Times Square Arts, Manhattan and more

New artists: Alixa Garcia, Carrie Mae Weems, Christine Sun Kim, Christine Wong Yap, Duke Riley, G.O.N.G. with Mel Chin, Jenny Holzer, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Nekisha Durrett, Paula Crown, Pedro Reyes, and Xaviera Simmons

With each passing week of the pandemic, our appreciation for New York City’s essential workers only grows. Today our citywide public art campaign channeling hope and gratitude expands to include new messages from a powerful group of artists.
Times Square Arts, Poster House, and For Freedoms proudly share the work of Alixa Garcia, Carrie Mae Weems, Christine Sun Kim, Christine Wong Yap, Duke Riley, G.O.N.G. with Mel Chin, Jenny Holzer, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Nekisha Durrett, Paula Crown, Pedro Reyes, and Xaviera Simmons in Times Square, across all five boroughs of New York City, and now in Boston and Chicago as well. This initiative joins a chorus of global gestures aimed at honoring essential workers — doctors and nurses, public transportation personnel, sanitation staff, grocery store employees, delivery staff, and restaurant workers, and more.
More Than 30 Artists and Designers Are Creating Billboards for Times Square and Beyond to Honor Essential Workers Across the US, ArtNet

Works by Carrie Mae Weems (left), Alixa Garcia (center), and Duke Riley (right)
This public campaign is on view in Times Square thanks to Morgan Stanley, American Eagle, Maefield Development, and Branded Cities’ Thomson Reuters and Nasdaq displays; in public health clinics, food pantries, and hospitals thanks to FY.Eye; and in every corner of New York City thanks to LinkNYC; and has expanded across the five boroughs and to Boston and Chicago thanks to JCDecaux.
Stay tuned for the next phase of Messages for the City with For Freedoms, which will amplify the individual voices of New York’s essential workers across a wide range of professions.

MIDNIGHT MOMENT: OPEN CALL
While the Midnight Moment series remains on pause, we are eagerly anticipating it’s relaunch and returning to Times Square for the nightly midnight takeover of its iconic digital billboards with videos from artists from around the world. As we await this reemergence together, artists are invited to submit proposals on an ongoing basis at TSq.org/MMSubmission.

Times Square Arts is supported in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support for Midnight Moment is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Times Square Advertising Coalition.

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Goings On is compiled weekly by Harley Spiller

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