Sebastian Errazuriz takes on #MidnightMoment- A Pause in the City That Never Sleeps

Artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz created A Pause in the City That Never Sleeps — a video work consisting of a single continuous yawn on loop, broadcast across Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 pm to midnight every night throughout January 2015.

The project ran as part of Midnight Moment, the monthly public art presentation organized by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts. The January edition was produced in partnership with Performance Space 122’s COIL 2015 Festival. On January 17th, the final night of the festival, a special gathering was held at 11:45 pm on Duffy Square — a live yawn-in with the artist.

The concept works on a simple biological truth: yawns are contagious. A bored, omnipresent head appears across multiple screens simultaneously, looking down at passersby from between product billboards and advertisements. Anyone who glances up is likely to yawn involuntarily. The yawn spreads into the crowd. The crowd disperses, each person now unknowingly carrying the impulse outward across the city — seeding rare, involuntary pauses in a place engineered to keep people moving and consuming.

As an intervention in the visual noise of Times Square, A Pause lands with unexpected precision. The most overstimulated corner of the most relentless city in the world, temporarily defeated by a single yawn on a loop.