MISSING

PROPOSAL FOR A TEMPORARY PUBLIC ART PROJECT REMEMBERING THOSE LOST TO COVID
2021

PROJECT STATEMENT

There’s reason to hope that in just a few months the current surge of COVID infections and deaths will have subsided and the rollout of safe and effective vaccines will be well underway. With luck, the end of this terrible period will be in sight, and life may even have begun to return to normal.

This moment will surely be marked by celebrations and a focus on rebirth (especially with warm weather and longer days in spring and summer). But a return to “normal” won’t be possible without some coming to grips with all that we have suffered and lost. This much death and trauma ought not go unacknowledged.

We hope to contribute to the healing of our communities through a temporary public art project that would work on two scales, conveying the devastating magnitude of the loss while also drawing attention to the individuality of each life. Ideally starting in spring of 2021, the project could roll out gradually over several months.

With a process known as “reverse graffiti,” whereby stencils and water jets are used to create an image by removing dirt, rather than applying paint, we propose rendering myriad footprints — a representation of the people who have died, made visible through absence.

The footprints, in every size and suggesting every type of footwear, from sneakers to boots to work shoes, would mirror the diversity of the multitude that have died from the pandemic (wheelchair tracks might also be included). Densely packed and implying movement and social interaction, the overall image would suggest a bustling crowd. While the footprints would not correspond to specific individuals, they would seem to trace the movements of lives with direction and purpose. With time, the marks would gradually vanish, becoming themselves memories. (A permanent version of this work that would similarly convey loss through subtraction could be created by alternating honed, flamed and polished finishes on a stone floor.)

Reverse graffiti is safe, inexpensive and commonly used in cities around the world by artists and commercially for temporary advertising and signage. No damage whatsoever is done to the underlying surface in the process, nor are chemicals used that might harm the environment. The image naturally disappears as dirt reclaims the surface. Tests we have done of the technique have been very successful (see page 7).

The installation might also incorporate stenciled texts with the number of deaths represented, or perhaps fragments of poetry that would add additional layers of meaning to the experience. (Effort would be made to use the words of writers representing the hardest hit communities.)

To represent the more than 25,000 who have been lost to COVID in New York City (at a density of approximately 5 to 7 people per 10 square feet) would require a full acre of space — the magnitude of the loss is truly hard to fathom. The High Line could accommodate it, as could the plazas of Lincoln Center. Alternatively, the footsteps might be installed in various locations across the five boroughs, or distributed in some way throughout the subway system. While deemphasizing the overall number of deaths, this approach would have the benefit of bringing the experience closer to the communities where the losses were suffered.

This approach of multiple sites could even be extended to cities and towns across the country, with each installation paying tribute to those lost in its community. In this way, the project could potentially create a valuable shared experience for the nation as a whole.

However vast the project, it would not have the grand, imposing quality of the 9/11 memorial Tribute in Light, which we conceived and helped realize in 2001/2. It would instead be more delicate and, as it draws attention to individual lives, more intimate. The work is a portrait of an absent crowd rendered in an ephemeral medium.

Somehow, New York, and every community across the country, will need to come to terms with what we have just been through. Connecting, if only briefly, with the many thousands of people we’ve lost could be a moving and memorable experience.

— Gustavo Bonevardi / John Bennett, February 2021