Young Projects “Match-Maker” February 10-March 11, 2014; photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts
ATTRACTION (of the holidays)
Updates
I am sure that all programmers feel the pressure during holiday seasons to have installations and activations that will celebrate the holiday. As a public art initiative, we also have to balance the promotional purposes of our installations against the civic role of art in public spaces. Valentine’s Day is a holiday often littered with many clichéd visuals that desperately try to capture intangible ‘love.’ Always there are hearts—a symbol we have come to accept as representing love, even though it doesn’t anatomically depict a heart. Milton Glaser’s famous ‘I ♥ NY’ logo has become a central part of our city’s identity, and New Yorkers especially love to take it out in February, even though we are a city of singles and our identity is probably more associated with dating than love. We are encumbered by over-stretched metaphors and generalized slogans.
Yet our program is lodged in a Business Improvement District, which works to support the commerce in our area. I am genuinely interested in how we may creatively engage with the holiday, make it enjoyable for our visiting audience and complementary to our businesses (theater, restaurants, hotels and retail) who can benefit from an environment that supports it. For Valentine’s Day, our communications team revaluated key messages—Times Square is not a place for just one type of romance, and we should help New Yorkers rethink Times Square as an ideal venue for Valentine’s Day—whether single or coupled, straight or gay, young or old. The campaign messaging was titled “Meet? Marry? Make it forever?” and promotional events ranged from dating events to proposals, marriages and to vow renewals. For our public art program, we were interested in works that would tie in to these other activities, aesthetically complement the environment and yet would still be more than just a clichéd symbol—something that has some context behind it. Rather than ‘love,’ we chose to focus on ‘attraction’—the exciting, hopeful and sometimes beautifully dangerous condition.
Recent Wins
As mentioned in our December blog post about selection processes, we chose Match-Maker by Young Projects as our 2014 Valentine Heart in collaboration with Van Alen Institute. Aside from the creative design—an alternative interpretation of a heart shape—we were particularly interested in the emphasis they placed on the interaction to help you meet your match, rather than just a celebration of existing love. Match-Maker is surrounded by pedestals marked with each zodiac sign, at which one can stand and view potential matches through four beautiful aluminum tubes. The activation of the project shifts the excitement towards attraction, hope and anticipation. In this world of digital hyper-culture, we were excited by its analogue form, recalling the long-standing, historical means of finding a mate—interactivity and chance encounter itself.
For our Midnight Moment this month, we chose a gorgeous piece of video ‘eye-candy’ by the artist Brian Dailey. A single, lit incandescent light bulb is suspended in the center of the frame, in front of a saturated sea of color slowly shifting from vibrant red to lapis blue to deep violet, bathing Times Square in light. A single white moth flutters throughout the screen, trying to reach the bulb—its Times Square flame. This piece called “Jikai,” is inspired by Shakespeare’s quote from The Merchant of Venice: “Thus hath the candle singed the moth.” For some, the danger of attraction references romantic peril; for the artist, it also forewarns us of how easily we can be drawn to the brightest element before us and lose sight of the havoc that may befall us in the process.
Midnight Moment: Brian Dailey “Jikai,” February 1-28, 2014; 11:57 p.m. - midnight every night; photograph by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts
Insight/Provocation
Collaboration and cooperation require that all parties maintain their sense of individual identity and mission. Public and private sectors can participate together, but their collaboration is only strong if the result supports each objective equally. The images below show how the public art works can complement the season, as well as various audience and business objectives, yet they are not the stereotypical images we associate with Valentine’s Day. Make choices that have key elements of the seasons; in these cases, the colors of Jikai and Match-Maker resonate with expected seasonal palette, without explicitly presenting conventional symbols of the holiday. The notion of attraction is an alternative spin on more conventional celebrations of love in February, while also being a theme that any age and cultural background can understand. Each artwork engages the audience in its own unique way to catalyze thought, action and dialogue.
Midnight Moment: Brian Dailey “Jikai,” February 1-28, 2014; 11:57 p.m. - midnight every night; photo by Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts