Bill Shannon (aka The Crutchmaster)

March 24-March 31, 2003
Citywide
Photo © 2003 Charlie Samuels

In March 2003 Creative Time teamed up with Bill Shannon, a street dancer, skateboarder, and performance artist also suffering from a degenerative bone disease, to investigate on both a theoretical and material level the condition of being disabled in the public context of New York City. What is What took the form of a multifaceted project consisting of a series of three street interventions, accompanied by an expository and performative website designed by Patrick Figuera.

Shannon utilized his crutches and skateboard to explore what he calls “the untrained street aesthetic” (such as spinning down a flight of stairs or crossing through heavy traffic) in urban spaces such as parks, public intersections, and sidewalks, thereby exposing his social status as a disabled person/performer. In each street intervention, Shannon posed questions to his incidental audience via his ambiguous actions, creating a temporal space where chance pedestrians might encounter, engage in, or dismiss his site-specific presence.

To contextualize Shannon’s interventions, business cards with the URL www.whatiswhat.com were distributed to chance onlookers, both during the week of Creative Time’s street interventions in March and over the next year at other venues where Shannon performed. The website offered the public a critical space for discourse on Shannon’s methodology and a fuller understanding of his practice.

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Adelle Lutz

March 20, 2003
Citywide
Photo © 2003 Risz Cale

As the American war with Iraq was declared in the spring of 2003, costume designer and artist Adelle Lutz conceived a project with the help of Creative Time which was designed to remind the public that the victims of war are overwhelmingly children and women. The Peace Piece consisted of women, dancers, and teachers who slowly walked through select public spaces in New York City while wearing hand-painted burkas depicting UN statistics such as: “23 million people live in Iraq. Half are children,” and “90% of war casualties are civilians,” while other burkas bore a hand-painted full-term fetus. Lutz’s performance intended to encourage unsuspecting audiences on the street to pause, reflect, and consider the current global situation. This powerful and elegant performance offered a fresh perspective on world events, encouraged dialogue, and resonated within individual and collective memories, making a difference to the viewer and wearer alike.

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Kim Bennett, Cary Leibowitz, Stephen Powers, and The Starlings

March 7-10, 2003
12th Avenue between 48th and 50th streets
Image courtesy of Kim Bennett

As part of its ongoing Art of Pure Pleasure program, Häagen-Dazs commissioned Creative Time to select four contemporary artists to create unique art objects to be displayed and distributed to patrons at the 2003 Armory Show. Established in 2002, the Häagen-Dazs Art of Pure Pleasure initiative sought to garner attention for the innovative work of up-and-coming artists in the fields of film, fashion, and the visual and performing arts.

For the project, Creative Time invited Kim Bennett, Cary Leibowitz, Stephen Powers, and The Starlings to design unique art object collectibles, referred to as “multiples,” that were displayed in a booth designed by Phil Nutley and given away to event attendees. Kim Bennett’s felt pennant, an extension of her wallpaper designs, championed a fantastical world. Stephen Powers’s eight buttons featured phrases that coyly played with the decorum of the art world. A similar interest in discourse characterized The Starlings’ pen and bracelet set, which allowed people to award their tokens of “good taste” and “bad taste” to artists, dealers, and other visitors to the fair. And Cary Leibowitz designed a bag which both lightly mocked the friendly banter of art enthusiasts at galleries, museums, and art fairs as well as functioned practically as a means to collect all of the other “multiples.”

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