Episode 70 Jean Cooney
Show Notes
If you listen to this show chances are you are familiar with some iconic images of time-based media art that has taken place in Times Square — in fact I think perhaps the first image I ever saw of Jenny Holzer’s work was a grainy black and white photo of one of her truisms on display on an LED sign in Times Square. Public art has been occurring in Time’s Square for many decades, but in fact, as we’ll hear from guest Jean Cooney, Time Square Arts has only existed for about 12 years. Before serving as their director, Jean was deputy director at Creative Time, another organization of course that is absolutely central to public art in NYC — I was really keen to sit down with jean to hear how she came to work within this particular niche, and in this convo we get to hear some really cool behind the scenes ins and outs of what it takes to help artists create art for the public, in perhaps one of the most public locations in the US, as well as, how the heck do artists create video art for 65 displays of various shapes and sizes in Times Square? All this and more in today’s chat with Jean Cooney.
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Links from the conversation with Jean
> http://arts.timessquarenyc.org/times-square-arts/index.aspx
> https://creativetime.org/
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Cass: From small data industries. This is art and obsolescence. I'm your host Cass Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. Today we are visiting with somebody who is responsible for what is perhaps the largest time-based media, public art venue in the world.
[00:00:24] Jean: I'm Jean Cooney, director of Times Square Arts.
[00:00:27] Cass: Before we get into today's interview, though, a bit of housekeeping, I am planning on making some creative changes to the show and exploring some new directions in 2024. But I would really like to hear from all of you to help shape the future of the show. So in today's show notes, you can find a link to a really short survey. And I would be ever so grateful if you would take the time to fill it out. And if you do I have some extra, super special limited edition Art & Obsolescence stickers that I will send to you by hand, via snail mail as a thank you.
Now on that note, one of the downsides of doing a podcast that doesn't have seasons is it can be hard to find the time to pause and get creative and cook up some new ideas, especially because even when you're not hearing new episodes, there is of course all kinds of production going on behind the scenes. So with that in mind, we, or rather I am going to be going on a little hiatus until February 2024. If you know me in real life, you are highly aware of the fact that for better or worse I have a sort of creative restlessness. I have lots of ideas and I really don't like just doing the same thing over and over again. And if you've been listening to the show since the first episode, you have also probably noticed that the show has changed very drastically since the first episode. So I'm really excited to take this time off and cook up some new, exciting ideas and come back to you all next year bright eyed, bushy tailed, and with a fresh new format for the show. Will I start distributing the show in audio tape format distributed by carrier pigeons, or will we get picked up by HBO as a new original series? I guess we'll just have to wait and find out. But please do fill out that survey in the show notes so that you have a voice in shaping the future of the show. Okay. Enough about all of that. Let's talk about today's guest.
If you listen to this show, chances are, you are very familiar with some of the iconic images of time-based video art that have taken place in times square. In fact, I think the first memory I have of seeing Jenny Holzer's work for instance, was a grainy black and white photo of one of her truisms on display, on an led sign in times square. Public art has been occurring in times square for many decades. But in fact, as we'll hear from Jean Times Square Arts has only existed for about 12 years. Before serving as their director, Jean was deputy director at Creative Time. Another organization, of course that is absolutely central to public art in New York City. I was really keen to sit down with Jean and hear how she came to work in this particular niche. And in this conversation, we get to hear some really cool behind the scenes ins and outs of just what it takes to help artists create art for the public in some very unconventional venues. We also get into some cool nerdy details about how the heck do artists create video art for 65 different led displays of various shapes and sizes in Times Square. All of this and more in today's chat with Jean Cooney.
[00:03:41] Jean: So when I think about my career path and, where it's taken me, it makes much more sense in retrospect than it did moving forward through it. for my undergrad degree, I chose international relations at Boston University. No real reason why. It sounded like it would be a nice take on a liberal arts education, and then in turn when I graduated, I, I still had no idea what I was going to do with that degree. it was a little bit of a listless moment. I moved from Boston to San Francisco. I remember working at a venture capitalist firm as a temp and like couldn't even figure out how to work the phones or the mail room and just like was wearing the same two Banana Republic pants to work every day and it was corporate and I just hated it. So this was 2000, in the Bay Area. it, was like as the bubble was bursting. Maybe, that also, factored into why I went straight from that temp job into restaurants. I had always worked in some kind of hospitality capacity since I was a teenager. It's like, oh my gosh, I got this liberal arts education to only be a restaurant server, but it, it really did come with a certain level of integrity and sense of pride and, and enjoyment, for sure. I think anyone will tell you in that industry, it's a burnout gig, you know, it's really physical for all of the ways it felt good to accomplish that task. It also felt like Groundhog Day, you know, you just got up and did it all again. And I think I just wanted to be part of something bigger. I did look around at the people I'd gravitated towards, in that moment in my life in the Bay Area, and I realized that a lot of them were creatives in some capacity. They were aspiring writers, filmmakers, visual artists, musicians, during my time in restaurants, I also was a general manager. I think to many of my friends, I seemed like... managerial or, business oriented, or maybe I could play like the straight man to their creative. And I, ended up being asked occasionally to help with things.
If I had a friend who was trying to run an independent film shoot, she asked me to help get bottled water for the Little League team that she had to film that day, and maybe like help with, running the set, or a friend would say, can you help me hang my art show at this gallery space? Or, my friend who's in a band needs someone to manage their gigs. And I didn't necessarily take everyone up on all of those offers. But it was a conversation I found myself having and enjoying because I felt like, while I wasn't an artist myself, I was in this role that had value to an artist, and I could take some of my sensibilities around, getting things done, and apply that to someone's creative pursuits. And so that was like the general compass I was working with when I took on, an unpaid gig at a gallery in Oakland. So I would bartend at night and then, there's this great gallery called Johansson Projects in Oakland that I worked at by day on the weekends. I also had a friend who, was a DJ turned Episcopalian priest actually. He had just gotten a gig at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, which is a beautiful Gothic style cathedral at the top of Knob Hill. Because he was the youth outreach coordinator there, within his purview was to stage events and invite people into the church for whatever reason. They could be spiritually oriented or they could be completely non denominational in nature. It was just, it was an engagement and an outreach gig. He, at the time, while he was a DJ and a musician, was a big part of this event series called Frisco Disco. So he translated that concept to... his current gig at Grace Cathedral, where he would bring in DJs and live music into the church, and then my friend and I would curate, and I wasn't using these terms at the time, site specific, temporary installations for one night only. So you'd have this kind of art and musical intervention in this gothic style spiritual space. he called those series Episco Disco. So from Frisco Disco to Pisco Disco with like a nod and, and a wink, to the fact that the church was an Episcopalian church. We threw these parties really is what they were. But they were so fun and really opened my eyes in retrospect to what art can be and how artists can activate unconventional spaces, which very much translates over to all of the work I got to do in public art in New York City. We probably ran about, 11 or 12 events in total. We ran Episco Disco for a year, but it caught on really quickly. We had this closeted mixologist in our midst who was working in admin at the church who would come make cocktails. I don't know why we were allowed to drink at these parties in the middle of a church. We had amazing artists come in and do sound installations, video projections. We, hung a giant prayer rope, we had inflatables, we had all sorts of fun stuff that we set up, and were loosely kind of themed around maybe spirituality or the ability for art to transcend and, connect and forge community, we had like hundreds of people coming out. And we were written up in the local media publications. San Francisco is a relatively small city, so, you know, if you're doing something relatively cool, it kind of catches on fast, and it was so much fun.
I took the experience with Episco Disco, as strange as it was, and then the work I was doing at the gallery, to then... apply to grad school. I thought, okay, this is my role. This is my lane within the arts. And I literally googled art and business because there's got to be like a degree I can get. And I did, in fact, learn that there is a degree, called arts administration. And I applied to a few on the East Coast and one or two on the West Coast. And I got into NYU's visual arts administration Master's degree program. it seems like it's a niche degree program, but I found it to be almost like getting another liberal arts education. My focus was nonprofits. And I, even from there still got to take courses on law, finance, fundraising, marketing and communications, curatorial praxis. We also got to work on case studies. So we would have people in the field come in and talk about what they were actually grappling with in real time. And we would assess from this 360 point of view, almost like a strategic plan. I found it just to be really a great education on the landscape and all of the ways in which you could pursue what might fall under the umbrella of arts administration. I also really used it to network. So once I found out that an internship was essentially course credit, I hustled as many internships as I possibly could because you're, you're in New York city. Like think about all of the places you could have access to under the umbrella of just being a student. So for three months, I got to work at EAI, Electronic Arts Intermix, and I was very much into video art at the time, so this was like a place I was really excited to be able to access, even if it was only for three months, and then from there, I also got to work at the gallery at NYU, and specifically for Peter Campus, who was a video art artist. Went to London one summer and worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and then from there I used that to apply for an internship at MoMA's Media and Performance Department, which was oh my god, you know, the biggest, and most coveted internship of all. And that really led me to getting my first job because I'm also not a baby as I'm taking this degree. I'm like 30, 31, 32. So I was like an adult baby intern. I was there in that capacity, but I was amongst people my age and who are still friends. To this day and, and some, future collaborators and some future colleagues. So it was a lovely way to really take this degree that is professionally oriented and take advantage of it as well as take advantage of being in New York City.
I don't necessarily recommend grad school or that degree program for everyone. If I had more of a sense of where I wanted to be earlier. You could cobble together through various jobs the kind of education I got through the visual arts administration degree. But I was looking to accelerate that. I clearly had a lot to learn. And I also wanted to understand generally how the field worked in a short period of time in a new city. I also just wasn't encumbered by, I think, the stress that younger grad school students have. I wasn't really stressing about the grades as much as I was just there to hustle and learn. And so for me it was great but I didn't come away from that program thinking, wow, everyone should do this and go into just as much debt as I did to essentially work for free for two years. But it was a really wonderful and pivotal opportunity for me.
[00:13:21] Cass: So seemingly right out of school, you land a project manager position at Creative Time. At least looking at your CV, it seems like you really thrived there because you worked your way all the way up from a project manager to become deputy director. So I would imagine there's a bit of a story there. I'm curious, you know, what those years were like for you.
[00:13:44] Jean: They were amazing. I mean, that was a whole other chapter of . education both personally and professionally in my life. It was transformative and I feel so lucky to have landed there because I'll tell you, here's another part of the journey where I wasn't exactly aware of what I was walking into and, only understand its value in retrospect. I mean, when I was working at that gallery in Oakland, I remember seeing Creative Time on the bio of one of the artists we were presenting and my job was to edit down the copy and I was like, well, let's get rid of Creative Time cause that sounds like a kindergarten. You know, meanwhile, I'm sure it was one of the, more valued presentation moments on that artist's bio. Sorry, but you know, hey, I didn't know I'm learning. And, I learned about Creative Time through the women I had become close with at the Media and Performance department at MoMA when I was the adult baby intern there. So Kara Stark was at the Media and Performance Department at MoMA for several years and had just left to become the Director of Exhibitions at Creative Time. She was looking for a project manager. The curators at MoMA said we love Jean. She's about to graduate and exit this internship program here. You should take a look at her resume. And so it was that connection that led me to the interview process at Creative Time. And I, I think Kara and I really clicked. And I think she was very, astute around just resumes in general. and taking pieces of people's experiences that might not on paper be an exact match, but had relevance, and could translate to the job, especially this job, which ... It entails so many things, managing public art projects all around New York City. But I do remember sitting down with Anne Pasternak, the executive director of Creative Time, for my final interview. And you know, I don't know if you know her, but she's a force. She's a big personality, and She's sitting there looking at me and looking down at my resume and saying, I'm gonna be honest with you. I wouldn't have picked your resume out of a pile. So why don't you just start by telling me what you're doing here and why you think you'd be good for this job? Obviously I said something to win her over but it was grad school, it was some free work in the Bay Area, it was hospitality and restaurant gigs, but I really do think that all of those experiences translated to all of the things I was about to do as a project manager at Creative Time. Although nothing could have fully prepared me for the projects that were to come.
The first project that, I got a chance to work on was Trevor Paglen's project, the Last Pictures, where Creative Time had launched an artwork into outer space, affixed to a communication satellite. And then the next project I got to work on was a project by Nick Cave, where he had 30 of his sound suits perform in Grand Central Terminal with, Ailey's School dancers for a week. And then Suzanne Lacey's project with, 400 femme identifying individuals sitting down on residential stoops in Brooklyn to talk about,, feminism through the lens of their lived experiences and their activist work, which ranged from, topics of immigration and sex work and motherhood and breastfeeding to domestic violence and so on and so on to just get this more comprehensive contemporary definition of what feminism might mean through people's lived experiences and then an early project. that I got to work on within my first two years there was Kara Walker's A Subtlety. Her giant sphinx made of sugar, staged in the former Domino Sugar Factory. Iconic. amazing, I can still smell the scent of that project and like the molasses dripping down the walls of that abandoned building. Black Radical Brooklyn, which was a four part community based project with Weeksville Heritage Center and Simone Leigh, Zenobia Bailey, Bradford Young, Otabenga Jones and Associates. And then the whole time I was working there, behind the scenes, I was on and off developing a project with the artist Phil Collins around mass incarceration. Not the lead singer of Genesis, but the, the, the artist. Phil is a socially engaged artist and his medium is often film, but his projects are so complex and are often very much about, engaging in long term relationships and building trust around. individual communities and, shedding light in a beautiful way on often marginalized individuals. he really wanted to tackle the issue of mass incarceration in the United States specifically. and as you can imagine, someone who is from the U. K. And also, Has not been incarcerated himself and also is dealing with a population who is high majority black and brown not white as he is. There was so much conversations that needed to be had and, trust that needed to be built and real relationships that needed to be forged. And so this project, which Creative Time ended up presenting in 2018, I had been working on since I started in 2012, 2013. So for seven years, he and his partner, Sinša Mitrović, and I were going in and out of facilities in different spaces, throughout the city and throughout the state. And for a large portion of those years, we were visiting a specific group of men serving long term sentences at Sing Sing, which is a maximum security correctional facility upstate. They were all aspiring musicians and Phil is hugely into music. It's just been like a driving force in his life and his practice. And so That ended up being our connection point. and we talked about music for several months. We ended up bringing in my brother who actually records music to, record them playing music. They came up with a couple original songs together. From there, it inspired the format. of the resulting work years later, so many years later, actually, that some of the men serving those long term sentences had gotten out and were part of the project, but basically the project was called Bring Down the Walls. It was inspired by those sessions. It was inspired by house music, specifically, and the house music scene, in various cities was often a space of liberation and safety and safe haven. And freedom and community, and it was also inspired by just the many, many conversations that we had and, how really the experts that need to lead us through something as complicated as mass incarceration are those who have been most impacted by it and who have experienced it themselves. And so Bring Down the Walls was in a firehouse, in downtown Manhattan, actually very close to, the Manhattan Detention Center, and by day it functioned as a school where people who had experienced incarceration or were very impacted by it or were already working in this space of abolition or activism around the criminal justice system would teach classes, lead sessions, and then by night that same space would turn into a nightclub. And you'd have various collectives run each night of the nightclub. We also made an album by formerly incarcerated singers and local producers to make house music covers. You could imagine how meaningful and how transformative an experience like that could be and I look at the world differently after working on that project. And those were the kinds of experiences that I got at Creative Time. I mean, a space that just radically puts forth all of the things that quote unquote public art could be if you had asked me what public art was before I started working at creative time, I would definitely my answer would revolve around monuments, you know, maybe public sculpture or something you'd find in a plaza. I did not know that it could take the form of pigeons in flight, or Sphinxes made of sugar, or, a nightclub. We got to work on so many other fun things. Solar powered ice cream trucks, and dances in the woods, and I knew in some ways how important the work was but it's only in retrospect that I would really be pinching myself around how special it was.
I also think about all of the work you'd have to do just talking to people who don't care about art when you have to get a public art project done. Like half of the work is talking to NYPD and the local fire marshal and the site manager at the factory just to engender trust and establish rapport with all sorts of people, regardless of who the artist is or how important the artwork might be. It was also really important, and look back to my restaurant work as well as kind of formative for me to be able to have all of these different kinds of conversations at different levels around a thing. And also rally people around it too, you know, and also persuade people to say yes when they might not want to. That was a formative moment in my career, too, that I think serves me now as well.
[00:23:10] Cass: Yeah, I can see how that's a massive skill to, you know, have that ability to just meet people where they're at, you know, especially in the art world where, I mean, let's face it, like, there can be a lot of pretense, right? I think sometimes people can be even afraid to admit that , they don't know who you're talking about, you know.
[00:23:25] Jean: Oh, that was such a big part of my career, and, and, you know, still is to a certain degree. There's real holes in my art historical knowledge, for sure, because I didn't really take that linear path, and I don't have an art history degree, or even a curatorial degree. but now I have the confidence to say, I actually don't. I'm sure I probably should know, but please tell me who that is. throughout the process there was a lot of insecurity and sidestepping and looking things up later and feeling like I was pretending,
[00:23:55] Cass: So I obviously want to get to talking about Times Square Arts, but just one more thing I wanted to touch on but Kara Walker piece is just so iconic, there's so many, so many people who saw that in person or saw images of that, that aren't as mainstream of art viewing audiences, and I think it's just something that's so memorable. and iconic. So I guess just to touch on it briefly. on the back end, what were the most challenging aspects of the project?
[00:24:21] Jean: Well, the biggest challenge, especially at the outset, was getting people to say yes to work with us, even to agree to build it, to say that it was possible. I don't think that's like intuitively feasible. You know, when an artist says, I want to make, at the beginning it was a 50 foot high, giant Sphinx made of sugar. In this crumbling factory, so we went to a couple folks who just wouldn't take the project on and it was really then about assembling a team of optimists and people who would say yes, or, had the hubris to think that they could figure out how to pull it off. And then how to make something out of sugar at that scale that was also structurally sound that wouldn't fall apart before the end of the exhibition was a big question mark as well, so there's a lot of back and forth on how it should be built. And then getting the sugar, I can't remember how many tons exactly we needed, but we did the math. The, the interior of the structure was basically a foam base. It was many gridded blocks and then carved out. One of the other big challenges was how to get the sugar to become this paste that would coat the exterior of the sculpture and then where we were gonna get all that sugar from. And we ended up Believe it or not getting the sugar from Domino sugar. So we were working in a formerly active sugar factory, but hadn't been active for many many years. Domino had moved some of its local operations up the river to Yonkers, but we had the audacity to go up there and knock on their door and ask them if they just wanted to give us a few tons of their sugar for this amazing, iconic, and historic project that, didn't exactly shed the kindest light on the sugar industry, but they said, yes, they were totally game and I'm still really impressed to this day. And we hauled, not me personally, but they hauled sugar from the Yonkers facility down to the Brooklyn Waterfront. And it looked like a scene from Breaking Bad. We had people in hazmat suits, like mixing sugar. We were also creating, one of the things that I think some people forget about is that there were actually these little figures that led up to the Sphinx itself. We called them the Sugar Babies, but they were these little boys essentially holding baskets. And, almost looked like they were bringing offerings to the Sphinx itself. Kara had made them out of some highly problematic figurines that, she had sourced from the internet, but those some of them were made of resin. Others were made they were actually like 300 pound lollipops so some of them were made of sugar as well and they did melt over the course of the exhibition which was intentional so there's all sorts of like baking and boiling and Like goo testing going on and and we needed a lot of hands to get all that sugar onto the Sphinx structure So I remember calling in friends and we had some volunteers even that would just do it for fun in addition to our, you know, core paid crew that were just like in boots sloshing sugar around it was just incredible though. It was incredible.
[00:27:49] Cass: The level of, hands on involvement that it sounds like the Creative Time team and, people that you brought in had is so surprising to me. I, I guess I just naively always assumed that, you know, a public arts organization like Creative Time plays just, you know, the operational, like, logistical role of, like, bureaucratic red tape and, getting the space and all of that and that, you know, it would be the artist studio doing all of that work, but that's incredible. It sounds like it's a real production oriented role.
[00:28:15] Jean: Oh my gosh, I'm like smiling as you're talking right now and I just want to give a shout out to all current, former and future Creative Time staff members who know that it's a really hands on job. and just that question. Alone makes me think about Fly By Night, and Duke Riley's project as well, we had Duke train 2, 000 pigeons to fly in synchronicity over the East River at dusk, launched from a decommissioned naval vessel. All with tiny remote controlled LED lights on handmade avian leg bands and there was a whole crew both part Creative Time staff and a crew that Duke had assembled that would help bathe the birds each week and then take their little avian leg bands off and shave the pigeon poop off of the circuit boards with cuticle pushers and re wrap the moleskin around the band so their little feet wouldn't get hurt and reinsert a new disposable battery so that the next week's flights could be powered. Each project was more bizarre than the next, but. absolutely hands on every single time, and I think that that is what makes Creative Time so special, is that it is anything but a production house. Or just the orchestrator of these large scale projects and commissions. It's like all built by hand with the artists, very much with the artists, in service of the artists, but also with the staff.
[00:29:50] Cass: So after seven years of creative time, you eventually move on and you become the director of Times Square Arts where you are now, of course. Yes. there's just such a rich history there. before we maybe get into like your role and how that's evolved, what you're doing there, I'm curious to know a bit more about just the history of, Times Square Arts, but also the history of art in Times Square, because artistic interventions have been going on there for a long time. So how, did all of that evolve and emerge?
[00:30:20] Jean: Well, Times Square Arts as a public art program is only 12 years old. It's a confusing distinction, actually. So Times Square Arts goes around acting like it's, an independent arts non profit, but really it's the public art department of the Times Square Alliance, which is a business improvement district . There's a long history of artists experimenting in and with Times Square. You have the Times Square show in the 80s. Which is historic and iconic and has some amazing artists, who took over some spaces in Times Square. You have Creative Time even coming in, with activations along 42nd Street. You have Max Newhouse operating solo. Intervening literally in the landscape of Times Square and specifically the MTA. We still have a piece that is humming every single day for 24 hours a day that is unmarked underneath the subway grid on 46th and Broadway called Times Square. But then the public art program in Times Square, Times Square Arts, was not really formalized until 2010. So the public art program in Times Square, more formally speaking, is only 12 or 13 years old. We have installations and performances and sculptures that we commission in our plazas. We have the Midnight Moment program, which runs every single night of the year from 11:57 to midnight. We have now about a hundred different displays that synchronize an artist's video work, a new artist each month. Then we also have things like... The love and design competition and we have an open air series throughout the summer called T. S. Q. Live. So trying to present Artwork and all the spaces we have access to we're trying to present free public art in this very commercialized place and we're also trying to hand it back over to artists to just keep experimenting in the ways that they historically have and reminding not only tourists But New Yorkers that Times Square is still a place for them and it can still be as much as it's like this iconic globally recognized public space that can also be a platform for New Yorkers and for artists to experiment and mess around and have fun with. We have on average about 350, 000 people coming through Times Square every day and a big portion of that are tourists, but there are so many layers of actual community. Community is not like a word that you would associate with Times Square necessarily, because Times Square just feels like this monolithic, faceless place from the outside, but there are office workers, there are back of house theater workers, there are street vendors, there is also Elmo and Spider Man, but there is a high school, there is a senior center, there are, non profit services for homeless youth, there's so many aspects of life happening in Times Square. It is a totally worthy audience to serve in all regards, but it's also just An incredible platform for artists to take over and really speak to in public. What are the most pressing topics of the day? What are the most urgent issues we need to discuss? What messages can we all rally around or have complex dialogue around? It's a powerful place, both in its symbolism, as well as in its texture and who you can actually, the diversity of who you can actually reach on the ground.
[00:34:12] Cass: Similar to the, bureaucratic, wrangling that you were speaking to that you have to do in terms of, getting all of these folks aligned, and folks whom public art is absolutely not their day to day or their priority or something, maybe that they're even interested in, Times Square has so many people filtering through it every day, and I would imagine it's similar, in the sense of who gets exposed to this public art. I would imagine there's a huge amount of people who are there, not expecting to see art at all, and I know that, a good deal of the projects that Times Square Arts has commissioned and facilitated over the years is oftentimes challenging, work that's engaging with some serious issues, and difficult topics, I'm curious to hear a bit about, to an extent are aware of those, pieces that have been more challenging, how the public reception has been, or maybe some surprising interactions that have resulted from that.
[00:35:04] Jean: Not only do you have an incredibly broad audience, In Times Square, you know, the numbers are just staggering. So if you have a sculpture, say, out on one of the more traversed plazas for six to eight weeks, you're talking about visibility into like 10 million, 12 million, 15 million people will have passed by that particular artwork, in that given timeframe. But when I first got here, as I was thinking about those numbers that are just unprecedented, you wouldn't get that kind of visibility at even the most prominent museum, right? You're also kind of wondering, well, did anyone know what it was? Or, like, how many people can we say out of that 15 million, stopped and read the tiny exhibition text? Or knew that what they were looking at was public artwork and not some other form of, corporate solicitation? When I got here in 2019, we were presenting Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War, which was a large scale equestrian monument that, um, was modeled after the Confederate monuments that you would find primarily in the American South, and in this case, one that he had modeled after of Jeb Stuart that is now no longer on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. But his version of this equestrian monument had a young black male rider instead of conventional war hero, or general, or white male, wearing just everyday clothes, you know, Nikes, ripped jeans, a hoodie, and he was atop the horse in this majestic pose that was, typically reserved for, war heroes and, white men. And so he was upending conventional notions of power and representation and wanted to talk about race and who and what we value in our society and and how we dedicate monuments and carve out space for individuals and various communities and identities in our public places. So what a powerful dialogue to be able to have with that many people Especially when you think about how diverse the audiences are in Times Square.
People are coming from not only all over New York, but the country, and blue states, and red states, and other countries, and having, you know, bringing completely different global perspectives, on all of those topics. But if you weren't spending any time engaging those folks in any sort of meaningful way, how could you ever claim that this artwork, quote unquote, sparked dialogue, right? So we launched what we called the Public Art Ambassador Program where we brought someone in, Sheetal Prajapati, who is formerly at MoMA, in the education department, and now consults in individual capacity. But she was really the driving force behind this program where we built out a cohort of people who, you know, just analog style, would be on the ground every day, chatting with people about the work. But the way we built the cohort was also very intentional. so multiple languages were represented, but also backgrounds were represented. so we had folks that were aspiring arts educators, but also somewhere through the process realized that the best trained individuals and really the experts on Times Square and having dialogue in public space were our own colleagues in public safety and sanitation. Those jobs keep you on the plazas every single day, we had a subsection of folks in those departments who were interested in art, and so the cohort became, externally hired arts educators paired with the public safety officers and sanitation workers who trained each other, and then they were all trained on the art. And so they would be out on the plazas, having these conversations, then coming back every couple of weeks to kind of discuss what they had heard. And this is where we're learning, oh, okay, so someone coming from another country isn't well versed on the Civil War, has a completely different vantage point on race, or you had someone coming from Virginia being like, sorry, I kind of like these Confederate monuments because it instills me with a sense of pride, not the average conversation you'd be having as, say, a New Yorker within the art world speaking to other New Yorkers who are also in the artwork world who likely share the same politics. And so that's kind of where we just got that real texture of what conversations could sound like and could be in Times Square.
[00:39:33] Cass: To me, it harkens right back to your Boston sports bar. Those people skills and that ability to, meet the needs of people in maybe a challenging environment. I can't think of anybody who might be more skilled in that in Times Square than the people who are there every day on the ground, taking care of the trash that people leave behind, because they must be having so many conversations all day, every day, with all different kinds of people, that seems like just such a brilliant move to bring those folks into the fold.
[00:40:05] Jean: Absolutely they're having every kind of conversation under the sun that they do and don't want to have, from talking politics to where's the bathroom? Answer is, by the way, we, we don't have one in Times Square. There's a lot of nuance behind even sparking a conversation, too, in Times Square. So our colleagues in safety and sanitation were actually really key in kind of cluing everyone in to the subtleties around what can establish rapport and if you put all the public art ambassadors in red jackets, They're going to look too much like the people trying to sell you a double decker bus ticket. And our public safety colleagues are actually in uniform, it kind of looks very authoritative. So if they're going to be in their more authoritative gear, they're going to get more questions like, can you help me get to this subway stop? And they're less likely to be approached about questions around the artwork. Or some folks could be intimidated to be approached by someone in uniform and then only to find out they want to chat about, you know, the confederacy and monuments and art. So even conversations around how to approach or be approached what folks should wear and how to engage others was really critically led by the people like you said who are down there in the plazas every single day.
[00:41:21] Cass: That is so interesting. Like, the clothes that different people wear inside art spaces, be it Times Square or a museum. It really does shape how approachable somebody does or doesn't feel, or it shapes preconceived notions that people might have about, does this person know anything about art or not, right?
[00:41:38] Jean: Mhmm, and then Sheetal was really critical in giving everyone the tools to have open ended conversations about art. Because like you said, weirdly, a very captive audience in Times Square. Many people are coming there because... they are seeking something some form of experience or unforgettable interaction, but they're not necessarily there for the art so in no way, can you first of all be like tadaa like this is public art, you're welcome everyone there's no room for that kind of top down attitude even in conversation. You can't really even go into a conversation assuming that someone wants to talk about quote unquote art, but, you can say, well, what do you think this is? Or all of the kind of traditional tenants of engagement and education is where Sheetal came in and kind of retrained, folks to have more open ended conversations that made no assumptions about where people were coming from, in terms of their art historical knowledge, their interests, their backgrounds and regional affiliations and politics and so on.
When I came to Times Square Arts, as you can imagine, I was like guns a blazin from Creative Time, you know, where we were tackling really heavy issues and complex social, political, cultural issues, the project with Kehinde and Rumors of War, was a signal to me that this was a program that was ready to go there, you know, across certain topics and really take advantage of the fact that you can have incredibly critical. Dialogues in this place, and the folks that you can engage around those topics are just unparalleled in terms of, the breadth and diversity of who your audiences are. also at the same time, though, I wasn't sure how far people wanted to go around particular issues. while people are in Times Square protesting, rallying, celebrating their various cultural heritages, and having, these conversations amongst themselves, I wasn't sure the organization was willing to be a more socially engaged space. And the answer is that the Times Square Alliance and Times Square Arts, people are interested keeping Times Square relevant in terms of, the cultural consciousness. It actually is a really powerful place to discuss capitalism and, in Charles Gaines's case, racial capitalism and the founding of our nation on exploitation. Kind of a heavy topic, but like, what more powerful space to have that conversation than Times Square? Or, Pedro Reyes is an artist who's very much into nuclear non proliferation. So, what more of an iconic venue could you have your giant 30 foot tall, zero nukes inflatable at than Times Square? And, you know, have folks on the ground trying to have those conversations around nuclear proliferation. even Robin Frohart, she has this incredible piece called The Plastic Bag Store, so, it was just a perfect opportunity. We timed it with New York State's plastic bag ban, that stretched across 2020, to invite people into this grocery store stocked with 10, 000 items all handmade from single use plastics. To just like, give people a bit of a unique perspective on our problematic relationship with plastic and what our longest lasting legacy might be. Also kind of playing to the idea that Times Square is this place for retail-tainment where people come into like the Hershey store for fun. It's been a really surprisingly potent and also fun space to press on some things and have some important dialogues
[00:45:09] Cass: That's fantastic. You know, I asked you about maybe more challenging works and how the public interacts with those. what has been the biggest crowd pleaser at least as far as you're aware?.
[00:45:18] Jean: I would say the biggest crowd pleaser So far has been Pamela Council's Fountains for Survivors. That one just to look at, even if you didn't go deeper on the significance of the work, even if you didn't come at exactly the right time, 11:11 and 5:55 to get your wishing wafer to throw it into the working water fountain while anthems of joy and survival were playing, you know, just to look at it. It was surreal and sparkly and pink and bright and... when you got closer and realized it was actually adorned with 400, 000 acrylic fingernails, fascinating. It's just like a feat in craft as well that I feel like with the recognizable forms, you know, in terms of the fingernails and the Swarovski crystals, and even inside a fountain is a very recognizable feature you might see in a public plaza. For that alone, to bring you in, I think it was very democratic and, and awe inspiring for people coming from all backgrounds, interests, it kept people engaged because it was also this multi sensory experience that had so many layers to it, and for the folks who wanted to sit and think about how this really unique and strange looking work was related to survival, then you really kept people's attention, conceptually as well, and Yeah, it was fun. I mean, it was playing like Beyonce it was all like soft with like pink fluffy clouds painted on the interior and it's hard exterior of, of some, some of those nails were hand painted by local artisans. So it was just, I think, a joy for people to spend time with. And then also I think it played really well in the press it just, to me is one of the pieces that seemed most suited to Times Square as well, just aesthetically. Like it was so campy. It was so maximalist. It was so spectacular. Pamela created this piece where it almost looked like pamela Council and, like, the M& M store, which they were inspired by, for sure, and, like, the, bring in, like, the T Mobile pink behind it and then a nail salon had, like, birthed an artwork and dropped it in the middle of the plaza, that would be it. It just, it felt weirdly, as much as it was from Pamela's distinct vision, it felt weirdly very Times Square.
[00:47:41] Cass: Mm. Well, that's also just such a great example because it just goes to show that a piece can be simultaneously the campiest, the flashiest, the most, instantaneously accessible on an aesthetic and experiential level, and sometimes that's just like the secret weapon that brings you into a more, meaningful and, and deep experience.
[00:48:00] Jean: Agreed. And it's really hard to shift anyone's physical or psychic experience in Times Square. It really bears down on you, and because you could partially step inside it, you never lost sight of Times Square completely, but because they created this almost cocoon like structure that could hold you for a second in this very soft way, I found myself walking in it and out of it with just this slightly different reverberation, and to change someone's physical mental emotional state in a place like Times Square was also a huge feat and I'm really impressed by them for that.
[00:48:43] Cass: Almost the opposite of, going all the way back to, Max Newhouse, that piece is so quiet, it's completely invisible, and if you haven't read a book about it, you don't even know it's there.
[00:48:53] Jean: No, but if you tune into it, it does recalibrate you in a certain way. It takes you from not being sure if that humming noise you're hearing is part of the landscape, or not, and instead of walking through a place like Times Square, trying to inoculate yourself from it, you've like somehow dialed into it, and now you're listening, for better or for worse, it, recalibrates your kind of sensory experience in this sensory overload of a space.
[00:49:23] Cass: You know, I'm curious, as a nerd...
[00:49:25] Jean: Go on...
[00:49:26] Cass: With regards to, you know, artists creating work for these massive screens in Times Square. It's a very specific form factor and layout, and I would imagine it must use some kind of like crazy specific digital signage software. Logistically and technically, what does that process look like for artists when they are either creating work for this environment or adapting existing work for this environment?
[00:49:54] Jean: So the Midnight Moment program is in its 11th year. It started on about five or six billboards and now has grown to almost 100 displays. the billboards of Times Square are iconic. And so I think there's It's in just symbolism alone, a really powerful thing for an artist to take over that commercial platform with art. But then now that it's grown, you have this incredible canvas that is seven blocks long and I don't know how many square feet. The displays are all actually run by disparate companies. Sometimes people think, oh, so you control all the screens in Times Square. I mean, I wish, but they're run by disparate and often competing entities. So you have the out of home programmers like Silvercast, Branded Cities, Clear Channel, Outfront. And then you also have the proprietary folks who are running their own billboards like T Mobile, Sephora, Swatch, Coca Cola. Then you have the financial institutions like NASDAQ and Morgan Stanley. You have real estate developers that are, leasing out their display to various advertisers. So they're all coming together and agreeing to something, which is incredible, and also willing to synchronize for three minutes every night, in the moments leading up to midnight, and then behind the scenes. We're doing the work of formatting the artist's video files with a post production company called Indigo Productions who's been invaluable to this process.
Each month we'll take a single video file and format it, or, it's really George at Indigo. Thank you, George. He'll be formatting that video file a hundred different ways. And then sending out those formatted files to spec to about 25, 26 different operators each month. So the biggest undertaking is his there's been a few artists who have been so ambitious and I'm endlessly impressed by that have taken on the full challenge of a 65 channel work when we had 65 screens, or just at least taking on some of the formatting for the more complicated screens, we have something called extreme verticals. There's a few screens or displays that are very skinny and very tall, and so they require a totally different approach. And so artists who are more technically savvy or have a team they could work with will start doing sort of bespoke formatting for some of the displays even, clustering, videos in, in different channels around how they're physically laid out throughout the plazas, mostly it's, post production and, and having George do all that formatting. And, and we work with the artists to give them a sense of what it will look like and have them make some aesthetic choices around how they'd like their files to be handled. And so they do have a say, in what the final presentation will look like, but there's a lot of work behind the scenes. And then the individual Displays all have programmers, so someone like Sensory Interactive or Darktronics will be doing the actual programming and getting it scheduled for the first of the month, every month. Lot of people involved.
[00:53:03] Cass: So George runs his, I'm sure he must have some like really well honed automation scripts at this point, where you, you know, the various like 20 different codecs all these different vendors want, but then literally it's, coordinated. It's not as though there's some, over arching timing technology that's synchronizing everything. It's all these individual vendors just saying like, yep, we've programmed ours, we've programmed ours, we've done ours, that all aligns.
[00:53:30] Jean: It all aligns. We do go out, or we try to go out on the first of the month just to catch any little discrepancies. It's almost like, programming something on a PC versus a Mac. The clocks have the capacity to be just a few seconds off from one another. So there's always, if you're really paying attention, a few displays that are operating on like a few seconds delay, which is often barely noticeable. But then, you know, sometimes programmers are busy so sometimes we go out and last month's midnight moment is playing instead. So usually there's just like a few calls that we have to make to say, hey, just a gentle nudge, noticed this and it's, it's fixed immediately. But yes, usually by the second or the third, everything is in sync and running
[00:54:14] Cass: The fact that it works as well as it does sometimes it can be difficult to, you know, get a complex, synchronized video artwork to function properly when it's a closed environment and you're completely in control of it let alone something this, large scale.
[00:54:29] Jean: It's impressive to me yes, that it actually synchronizes, although these have got to be some of the most savvy programmers in the field. I mean, these are really high stakes, high, high value advertising platforms. So I imagine they're not messing up too often. There's probably a lot of dollars at stake. And these are not like indie companies. These are mega corporations. So I imagine they're putting the resources to things running smoothly as well. I just can't believe sometimes that everyone has said yes. I go around talking a lot about how this is important for Times Square. It's important for New York City. This is like something magical that only our district can do. So I can also, put that hat on think in that mode of like, of course you should join us. But, but often when I go out to view the midnight moment each month, I am seriously humbled by the fact that all of these people For whom public art is not their core purview have said yes to public art every month every single night of the year It's it's just a beautiful thing and it really softens the heart a little bit and definitely has endeared me to Times Square as a place and to be on the inside of that. It's like no, it's not this like massive monolithic corporate hellhole. It's like a place where people are, and people are, behind those screens. Not like on a little bicycle running them or something like that, but really like there's humans making decisions behind this monumental space. And so Midnight Moment often reminds me of that.
Even at the peak of the pandemic, as we were all struggling individually and collectively, Times Square, yet again, proved itself as this powerful place, when the first cases of COVID were being reported on the image that publications were using was images of an empty Times Square to kind of demonstrate within one photograph how swiftly and severely our lives were changing or about to change. That said, as Times Square is the backdrop for this powerful messaging, we knew that Times Square wasn't actually empty. Granted, it felt like tumbleweeds, but comparatively to what it would have normally been, but there were still 30, 000 people coming through Times Square every day at the peak of the pandemic. ?We're talking like March and April of 2020 when we were all being told to stay at home. First of all, our colleagues were suddenly deemed essential workers in public safety and sanitation, so they're still there every day. You have anyone who also was deemed as an essential worker in transit, many of them coming through Times Square. You had health care workers coming in from other states and posting up in our hotels, which were still open, and we do pedestrian counts. Creepy, I know. So we were tracking, you know, about 30, 000 people every single day. So that was a moment where we scrambled and like pulled together whatever resource we had to say this is actually still a time for public art. It felt so weird to be even thinking about art because we were trying to just basically figure out what the fuck was going on, stay safe and in some cases stay home or get back and forth to work safely. but it still felt like an opportunity for public art because artists were also out of work. Essential workers are feeling vulnerable in our streets. The rest of us are staying home and feeling totally helpless. But it was still times where the space where you could communicate. Our billboards were still blinking and we knew that a lot of artists collectives like For Freedoms and other organizations like Poster House were already trying to figure out how to get artists designed, public service announcements out there in the world. And try to have artists like who are so well equipped at synthesizing these complicated massive issues in single visual images to just put work out there in the world keep us all connected. So we launched this campaign with both of those groups actually called messages to the city our billboard operators were like, still interested communicating out to the world that we're still here and we're still going and it's not business as usual and we're not dead or on pause completely that like life still lives here and we all need to stay connected in some way and so we put up, over 36 artists work that were all themed around love and solidarity and caring for one another and respecting your neighbor and essential worker and things like that. And it then started appearing as the backdrop of some of these media spots that were posted up in Times Square throughout the pandemic to kind of gauge whether life was back or not. And it was a powerful place even in its most empty and kind of desolate moments too.
[00:59:13] Cass: So, looking more towards the present and the future, I am super curious to hear, what is coming next for you and for Times Square Arts, any exciting projects in the works that our listeners can look forward to?
[00:59:28] Jean: Yeah, so listen if you ever find yourself either in, near, or interested to go to Times Square near midnight. We always have Midnight Moment. That's like the most reliable, art exhibition. It always starts on time, too. It's a short three minute experience, but from 11. 57 to midnight, we have beautiful works coming up. Right now there's a piece called Anna Ridler called Circadian Nocturne, next month in November we have a piece called Screen Test Isabel by Andrew Ondrejcak. And then we're going to be announcing our winter season soon but on the ground in the plaza on November 8th we have another inflatable, actually, our second inflatable in the program's history, but this one is very different. It's by Marta Minujín, who is an 80 year old Argentinian conceptual pop artist who also has, her first U. S. survey exhibition at the Jewish Museum. So even though she's really well known in Argentina and Latin America. She's relatively lesser known in the States and she's having a moment. She's been working for 60 years as an artist and was contemporaries with Warhol and is just a fascinating figure, both in her practice and personality. She's so spirited, she's so Times Square. The piece that she's making for us is a 30 foot tall inflatable that's 16 pieces just swathed in vibrant color and it's also immersive. For certain hours of the day you can walk through it and hear pre recorded bird sounds and Marta encourages people to, either deposit or conjure their deepest wishes and desires while they're walking through this sculpture. It's really just a light hearted, fun, spectacular intervention into Times Square that's also rooted and connected to her broader practice that you'll have, more of a depth of engagement around at the Jewish Museum, should you make it there. That show at the Jewish Museum will be opening in November and running through March.
We are going to have an ice sculpture in Times Square in February. So Governor's Island Arts, it's their third annual ice sculpting show, which is awesome. It's live sculpting, in February. Chainsaws and ice picks. The whole deal, you get to see a live artwork carved from ice by the finalists in this competition. And then the winning design is actually going to come and get supersized in Times Square, on Valentine's Day. Because on Valentine's Day, Times Square Alliance actually hosts weddings, surprise proposals, and vow renewals. So you have people popping the question to each other, in the middle of Times Square, the billboards get involved. It's really sweet, and the backdrop for all of those activities then will be this ice sculpture. It will be up for as long as it doesn't melt.
[01:02:14] Cass: So giant inflatables and giant ice sculptures. It's a maximalist fall and winter programming.
[01:02:20] Jean: Exactly having some fun this season and then some other great projects, of course, on the horizon, but people get really mad at me if I started talking about those yet.
[01:02:30] Cass: No spoilers.
[01:02:30] Jean: Check back in. No spoiler, no spoilers here.
[01:02:33] Cass: Jean. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been a real, real pleasure to hear your story and to go behind the scenes of, a aspect of Time Square that I think a lot of people in the arts are curious about. So really appreciate it.
[01:02:45] Jean: Thank you so much for having me. This has been a great way to spend my afternoon and thank you for all of your questions, both insightful and nerdy alike.
[01:02:53] Cass: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Jean Cooney. Like I mentioned at the top of the show, I would love to hear your feedback on the future of the show. Check out the link in the show notes for a very brief survey and to get your limited edition Art & Obsolsecnce stickers. And also just a reminder as I do this work on reshaping the show for the new year, we'll be taking a hiatus until February 2024. Not to worry though. Now, after two years of the show, you have 70 episodes to revisit, and this adds up to over 50 hours of in depth interviews. You could sit down and re-binge the show for two entire days straight, if you wanted to. As always, if you like, what you're hearing on the show listener support is very, very important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence, or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so at artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there, of course you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least, you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence. Until next time, I'll see you next year, take care of my friends. My name is Cass Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.