Times Square Arts Announces New Midnight Moment Summer Season

Times Square Arts has announced the new Summer Season of Midnight Moment, featuring video artworks by Kenneth Tam, Brandon Kazen-Maddox & Up Until Now Collective, and Jennifer West. Midnight Moment is the world's largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57pm to midnight.

The summer 2021 program of Midnight Moment brings a range of topics to Times Square, including Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes, which examines Asian American identity through the performance and movement of iconic American cowboys; Brandon Kazen-Maddox & Up Until Now Collective's cover of Gladys Knight and The Pips' "Midnight Train to Georgia" in American Sign Language; and Jennifer West's Painted Cat Hacker Film, which considers the legacy of cats on the internet and in experimental film.

"We're excited to bring these three distinctly beautiful artworks to the Midnight Moment program and to Times Square this summer, where they can expand to epic proportions, take on new significance in this unique and iconic urban space, and reach the growing number of visitors headed here as the city begins to enjoy its outdoor and shared spaces again. Thousands of pedestrians cross the Square each night and we're thrilled to present dynamic public art around the clock for New Yorkers and visitors alike," said Times Square Arts Director Jean Cooney.

Throughout the pandemic, the Midnight Moment program has continued to present exciting video artworks across 70+ billboards in Times Square, creating a safe way to engage with New York City's art scene outdoors. Recent Midnight Moment artists include David Hockney, Rashaad Newsome, Allison Janae Hamilton, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Daniel Crooks, Erin Johnson, and more.

Upcoming Midnight Moments include exciting presentations from the following artists:

JUNE 1-30, 2021 | Nightly 11:57pm-12am

Kenneth Tam
Silent Spikes (2021)
In partnership with the Queens Museum and Absolut Art

Presented across 75+ digital billboards in Times Square every night this June, artist Kenneth Tam's Midnight Moment Silent Spikes reimagines Asian American identity through performance and movement. Set against a saturated and dream-like backdrop, Silent Spikes features Asian American men of various ages and backgrounds dressed in iconic American cowboy garb, mimicking the movements of a bull rider in slow-motion. The figure of the cowboy looms large within the American popular consciousness and continues to function as shorthand for a kind of idealized white Western masculinity.

Using the power of cinema and the iconography of the Western film genre, Silent Spikes inserts Asian American men into a space from which they have traditionally been excluded and asks viewers to question how mythologized conceptions of America's past continue to shape ideas about the performance of race and gender today.

Silent Spikes is presented in partnership with The Queens Museum, where Tam's solo exhibition of the same title is on view through June 23, 2021. Organized by Queens Museum Assistant Curator Sophia Marisa Lucas, Kenneth Tam: Silent Spikes features new video and sculpture work that reflects upon the entangled histories of Westward expansion and immigration in the U.S. by working collaboratively with contemporary subjects of the Asian Diaspora.

Kenneth's Midnight Moment is also presented in partnership with limited edition print platform Absolut Art. As part of the presentation, Absolut Art will offer two signed, limited edition prints by Kenneth Tam on absolutart.com and donate $2,500 to Heart of Dinner, a nonprofit collective selected by Tam, which works to fight food insecurity and isolation experienced by Asian American seniors throughout New York City.

JULY 1-31, 2021 | Nightly 11:57pm-12am

Brandon Kazen-Maddox and Up Until Now Collective
Georgia (2021)
from SOUL(SIGNS): AN ASL PLAYLIST Commissioned and Distributed by Broadstream Media

We'll be boarding the train to Georgia every midnight in July with UP UNTIL NOW - a new artist collective creating interdisciplinary content that is radically empathetic, accessible, diverse and inclusive. The collective's American Sign Language (ASL) cover of Gladys Knight & The Pips' 'Midnight Train to Georgia' is performed by Deaf actor and dancer Mervin Primeaux-O'Bryant and Brandon Kazen-Maddox, a hearing Grandchild of Deaf Adults (GODA), dancer, choreographer and third-generation native signer of ASL. Elevating sign language from supporting role to center stage, Georgia makes music visible nightly in Times Square, synchronized across more than 75 screens in the moments leading up to midnight.

In their moving and animated rendition of the 1973 classic, Primeaux-O'Bryant signs the role of a heartbroken Gladys Knight, and The Pips are personified by Kazen-Maddox - Knight's confidant as she rallies herself to join her lover who's decided to leave her for a 'simpler place and time.' The duo incorporates Black ASL and elements of Visual Vernacular to embody an invisible train and bring to life the seductive and punchy lyrics of the original song.

Georgia is one of 10 covers of seminal musical works by Black female artists in a series by UP UNTIL NOW titled SOUL(SIGNS): An ASL Playlist, all commissioned by Broadstream Media, a new arts streaming platform.

Throughout the month of July, UP UNTIL NOW Collective will also be presenting weekly live performances in Times Square incorporating music, dance and ASL. Dates and details to be announced soon!

UP UNTIL NOW Collective was founded by Brandon Kazen-Maddox, Kevin Newbury, Marcus Shields and Jecca Barry in the summer of 2020 to gather artists who have never been brought together before. These artists, currently numbering two dozen and counting, come from multiple disciplines to create work that is joyful, challenging and necessary. Committed to inclusive, accessible, and equitable working environments, UP UNTIL NOW develops and produces new interdisciplinary work that explores empathy, intimacy, and community, and seeks to challenge the status quo by building new structures for artistic creation.

AUGUST 1-31, 2021 | Nightly 11:57pm-12am

Jennifer West
Painted Cat Hacker Film (2021)

Every night in August, glowing felines in Jennifer West's Painted Cat Hacker Film will take over Times Square, transforming the "low art" of cat internet videos into a mesmerizing and monumental public artwork. To create the spectral and lo-fi effects in Painted Cat Hacker Film, West first compiled 16mm clips of cats against a green screen. Manipulating the celluloid in her signature style, West applied bright colored dye to the filmstrip before transferring it to high-definition video. The resulting piece is a multi-channel work of handmade digitized GIFs that pays homage to the feline's role across many moving image genres - from the viral video, to experimental film, and the screens of Times Square themselves.

Painted Cat Hacker Film is also a playful nod to the ongoing phenomenon of the public's fascination with cats on the Internet. The subject of both serious writing and light-hearted inquiry, research has suggested that viewing online cat media is linked to positive emotions, and that it even may work as a form of digital therapy or stress relief. To share this unique form of pleasure therapy, West will curate a selection of artists' videos and films that feature cats to be shown both online and on Times Square billboards. Full schedule and details to be announced.

Visit TSq.org/Arts for more information.