NYC Parks Presents THE TYPEWRITER PROJECT: THE SUBCONSCIOUS OF THE CITY

NYC Parks and The Poetry Society of New York, producers of The Poetry Brothel and the New York City Poetry Festival, are pleased to announce the relaunch of the interactive public arts initiative, The Typewriter Project: The Subconscious of the City. The project is currently open on the south side of Tompkins Square Park near the Hare Krishna Tree on and will remain open to the public through July 19th at 8:00 pm. The project's hours of operation will be Monday-Friday, 3:00 pm-8:00 pm, and Saturday & Sunday, 12:00 pm-8:00 pm. The piece is completely free and open to the public.

The Typewriter Project is a series of interactive literary art installations-small, wooden shelters just big enough for a seat, desk, and typewriter-which invite passersby to join in a citywide linguistic exchange that takes both analog and digital forms. Each booth is outfitted with a vintage typewriter, 100-foot long paper scroll, solar generator, hidden tablet, and a custom-built USB typewriter kit, which allows every written entry to be collected, stored, and posted online for users to read, share, and comment upon. Acting as a public, community diary, each scroll captures something of the sound, narrative, and nuance of a specific corner of the city. The Typewriter Project's mission is to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of the city while providing a fun and interactive means for the public to engage with poetry.

According to Stephanie Berger, co-creator and CEO of The Poetry Society of New York, "The project was largely inspired by the idea of an Exquisite Corpse, a surrealist writing game that Andre Breton and his friends used to play while drinking. One person writes a line of poetry and hands the piece of paper to the next person. Then the second person writes a line and folds the paper so that the first line is hidden and the second one still visible. He or she then passes the paper to a third person who adds and line and folds the paper so that only their line is visible. This is repeated until finally a collaborative poem is created. Obviously each entry in The Typewriter Project can be its own discrete lyric, but we hope that users will also be influenced by what was written before them on the scroll."

The project's other creator and Chief Operating Officer of The Poetry Society of New York, Nicholas Adamski explains, "We gravitate toward parks and more pastoral locations for this project because a city's parks are built in part to be refuges from the noise of the city. They are sort of perfect for actually hearing the subconscious. We're particularly excited about Tompkins Square Park because of its vast literary history and all those ghosts."

The scrolls that are produced during this iteration of the project will be on display at The New York City Poetry Festival (www.newyorkcitypoetryfestival.com) on Governors Island on July 25th and 26th along with the booth itself.

NYC Parks' Art in the Parks program has consistently fostered the creation and installation of temporary public art in parks throughout the five boroughs. Since 1967, collaborations with arts organizations and artists have produced hundreds of public art projects in New York City parks. For more information visit www.nyc.gov/parks/art