5. Midnight Moment at Times Square
Times Square Arts presents a new edition of its monthly art installation Midnight Moments this January. This new iteration features a series of watercolor animations entitled Long Low Line. Created by interdisciplinary artist Danielle Dean, Long Low Line reimagines archival American auto advertisements, removing cars from a fictional landscape to emphasize the illusion of capitalism and aspirational consumerism. Through its utilization of linear panning across scenes of architectural ruins and sun-kissed mountain ranges, the three-minute video makes reference to the continuous movement of industrial assembly lines and multiplane camera techniques,
Long Low Line‘s vignettes were inspired by advertising campaigns for “Fordlandia” a town built in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest during the 1920s to source rubber. In Long Low Line, Dean extrapolates upon the idealized advertising material originally employed to justify the town’s mass consumption and environmental extraction. By doing so, the video imagines new fantastical environments set amidst the world’s most iconic commercial space, challenging viewers to question the relationship between the environment and consumer capitalism.
