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Call Box Installation @ the Down Town Arts Festival
On
September 9th, and 16th, the Downtown Arts Festival presented
the first outdoor, street level installations of Witness: Perspectives
on Police Violence, a public artwork created by Bradley McCallum
in collaboration with Jacqueline Tarry. The work was installed
on 10th Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets in Chelsea on September
9th, and on Greene Street in Soho, on the following Saturday as
part of the festival's Performed Sculpture Series: Endurance.
The installation of Witness at both venues consists of
a group of five traditional police and fire call boxes altered
to present photographic images of locations where police violence
occurred and audio testimony given by police officers, activists,
bereaved parents and survivors of police-related violence. Each
call box presents testimonies relating to a different incident
of police violence or violence directed at police officers. The
call boxes were installed on the street in a group so that viewers
could move from one call box to the next, eavesdropping on the
amplified testimony.
Witness
builds on the legacy of artists who came into prominence in the
early 80's such as Dennis Adams, Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer
who claimed public niche spaces as sites for their work. Like
these works, Witness captures the attention of an unexpecting
audience in a poetic, yet arresting way.
Dan
Cameron, Senior Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art,
states in a recent essay, "Because the same absence of a mediating
cultural force has also left vast segments of the population convinced
that contemporary art has nothing to do with their lives, McCallum
(and Tarry) often seek out venues that correspond more to the
daily routines of average people."
For
McCallum and Tarry, their public work is a vehicle to engage civic
discourse, which develops from a long-term interaction with organizations
and individuals. It is this in-depth level of engagement and social
interaction that informs the aesthetic of the work.
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