By Hilarie M. Sheets and Julia Carmel
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Remixed footage from live performances of Rashaad Newsome’s piece “Black Magic” from 2019 will be on billboards in Times Square each night of December. via Rashaad Newsome Studio |
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.” The opportunity to stage “Black Magic” in Times Square — a storied crossroads of commercialism, celebration, protest, performance — “was a great proposition to do something transgressive,” said Mr. Newsome, 40, who grew up in New Orleans and is now based in Oakland, Calif., and Brooklyn. [More]