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.