The opportunity to stage “Black Magic” in Times Square “was a great proposition to do something transgressive,” said the artist Rashaad Newsome.

By Hilarie M. Sheets and Julia Carmel,

”Just before midnight every evening in December, some 70 digital billboards encircling the gaudy canyon of Times Square will be co-opted for three minutes by slow-motion images of Black voguers, performing dances of resistance, resilience and liberation.

The video installation is the work of the multidisciplinary artist Rashaad Newsome, who has remixed footage from live performances of his 2019 piece “Black Magic.”…

For such artist projects, “it almost doesn’t matter if there are zero people in Times Square because it’s really about filming it and then sharing and scaling it on social channels,” said Jodi Senese, the chief marketing officer of Outfront Media, which has 24 displays in Times Square. “The spread becomes enormous.”

Source: The New York Times