ART CITIES: N.York, Laurie Anderson, Midnight Moment In Times Square

Times Square’s Midnight Moment is an art initiative by Times Square Arts in which all of the billboards in Times Square synchronize to show an audio/visual art piece at exactly 11:57pm everyday for 3 minutes. The program premiered in May 2012 and is organized and supported by the Times Square Advertising Coalition in partnership with Times Square Arts.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Time Square Arts Archive

The series, presented has in the past included works by Andy Warhol (May ‘15), Björk (March ’13) and Yoko Ono (Dec ’12).Laurie Anderson, the performance artist known for incorporating new technology into her work, with her friends put on a concert for hundreds of dogs outside the Sydney Oper a House, with the music emitted from speakers at a dog-friendly frequency. At the end, they began to bark, “It was a beautiful sound”, she said. “They barked for five minutes. That was one of the happiest moments of my life”. Laurie’s Anderson, contribution is a three-minute cut of her documentary “Heart of a Dog” a poetic visual essay about, among other things, the journey from life to the afterlife. “Heart of a Dog” which has been shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination, is about 75 minutes long and with dreamlike fluidity, tackles a wide range of themes: mortality, love, art and even post-9/11 surveillance. The Midnight Moment’s three-minute edit, Anderson said, “Homes in on the bardo”, the journey into the afterlife as depicted in “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. Since the 2010 concert in Australia, her rat terrier, Lolabelle, a central character in the documentary, has died. “The bardo”, the artist said, is the heart of the film, and it lent itself well to the time constraints of the Midnight Moment. “The images from the bardo don’t have to follow a narrative,” she said. “I wanted something that would work in a dreamlike way”.

Info: Times Square, Manhattan, New York, Duration: 1-31/1/16, Days & Hours: Daily 23:57-00:00