The Sky is the Limit
October, 2011 / The High Line / New York, NY
June, 2010 / Three Rivers Arts Festival / Pittsburgh, PA
For this project, Beck hired a skywriter to write phrases from advertising in the sky and in ad space in the local paper. Removed from their original context and without any product to sell, the words became floating poetry. Space Available, Everything Must Go and All Sales Final gradually appeared and disappeared. As Beck’s performative artwork unfolded, groups of people looked up to spell out the words, recalling Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway when another skywriting spectacle brought people together to find meaning in the urban landscape.
For the second version of this project, Beck employed the skywriter to write: Lost Our Lease, Last Chance and Now Open over the New York City High Line, where she had been commissioned to install Space Available, a series of billboard sculptures. In the context of an economic recession Occupy Wall Street, and the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the phrases landed as ominous to some viewers and hopeful to others.
