Mark Read, 99% Bat-Signal
Creative Time's Chief Curator Nato Thompson hosts artist and activist Mark Read, whose 99% Bat-Signal famously shone on the NYC Verizon building on November 17, 2011 to commemorate Occupy Wall Street's two month anniversary. Read soon molded his bat signal into a mobile projector installed in a Ford van (called the Illuminator) and continued to blast more OWS support slogans on NYC buildings.
This program is part of a regular series entitled Forms of Life, hosted by Creative Time’s Chief Curator Nato Thompson, and produced for their online magazine, Creative Time Reports, in partnership with ARTonAIR.org. Guests are culture makers whose work posits new ways of looking at political realities. By addressing a wide range of issues such as alternative economies, calcified political structures, new forms of collective living, or simply being a thorn in the side of normality, Forms of Life interviews provide an opportunity to think counterintuitively about social conditions people face around the world.
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Creative Time is a New York-based non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning, presenting and preserving the most challenging, pioneering and exceptional art of the contemporary period. Its prerogative is advancing and fostering the artist, creating a space where ideas are valued over economics and artistic and intellectual engagement with the public are encouraged over exclusivity. The goal is a democratic one: for the use of free space and a creation of dialogue in the public arena.
Creative Time was founded in 1974 and has, since its foundation, encouraged artistic and public discourse with the preeminent social, cultural, political and environmental issues and concerns of our contemporary period. It has encouraged artists to address timely issues such as the AIDS pandemic, domestic violence and racial inequality, including among its alumni community Vito Acconci, Diller + Scofidio, David Byrne, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Red Grooms, Jenny Holzer, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Sonic Youth, Elizabeth Streb and a near-infinitude more.
In engaging with public spaces and ideas, Creative Time fosters and contributes to the eclectic and vibrant spirit of the city in which it was born.
