Artists Ligorano/Reese 'Meltdown the Economy' Close to the Heart of Wall Street

Thursday, 30 October 2008 21:25

 

New York City - On October 29, 2008, the 79th anniversary of Black Tuesday, the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression in 1929, artists Ligorano / Reese melted down the “Economy.” In a new, time-based event, called Main Street Meltdown the artists installed the word “ECONOMY,” carved in ice, in Foley Square, using the New York Supreme Court as a back drop. The event began on Wednesday, October 29th and will last 24 hours.... or until the Economy melts. 

The artists chose Foley Square, close to the heart of Wall Street, as the site to focus on the timeliness of the financial crisis in the final week of the presidential campaign. The artists refer to Main Street Meltdown as a “temporary monument.”

The monument measures 15 feet long, 5 feet tall, and weighs almost 1,500 pounds. It is the fourth in a series of ice sculptures by the artists that deal with important political issues. Earlier this year, Ligorano/Reese staged ice sculptures of the word “Democracy” during the Democratic and Republican Conventions in Denver and St. Paul.

“What we like about these sculptures,” Reese says, “is that they are very popular in the best sense of the word, people love to touch them, but in the shape of a word, to see them meltdown and vanish, they take on a completely different meaning.”

“With the recent turmoil in the financial markets,” Ligorano adds, “the anxiety creeping through the country from Main Street to Wall Street… this sculpture metaphorically captures the results of unregulated markets on the U.S. economy. To see the word “economy” melting down is representational of an extreme time.”

It can take Ligorano/Reese’s sculptures anywhere from 10 to 30 hours to meltdown. The artists photograph and videotape the event to create time-lapse photographs and films, posting the results in real-time on a special internet blog.

How long will it take for “Economy” to meltdown, no one knows...but this is a most timely installation.

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