Danger, fear, and art-making in New York City

Ade’s art adventure in Brooklyn

Imagine this. I get an email with a question about working on a project for VICE TV. A scam? I hop on a video call and before I know it I’m offered the opportunity to spend a week in Brooklyn creating my animations all over New York City. My dream project fell into my lap.

Clearing my schedule wasn’t a problem since I’d been laid off from OpenText 13 days prior. The timing couldn’t have been better, actually. I had about 3 weeks to prepare 8 animation sequences. Each sequence was 18 frames. That sums up to 144 stickers. To cover myself with backups, I doubled it to 288. Plus I made a stack of VICE logo stickers and I ended up with 350 stickers to unleash on the city.

This story exists because people like you support people like me. It would be my honor to have you in my corner, too.

My normal method is to have a single sheet of all the stickers in the sequence. The problem is that these sheets are prone to blowing away and are awkward to carry around. For this adventure I switched to little flip books of stickers made from the non-stick backing of shipping labels stapled together. This worked great because they were pocketable and kept the animations in order. I finished the sticker prep the night before my plane left.

My plan was to explore the city by foot, bike, and Subway. I thought I packed light, but after my first day lugging 2 tripods and a big bag of gear I needed to shed some weight. By my last day, all I carried was my phone, stickers, and a tripod. I’ll make a separate gear post if people are interested, but for now I’ll just talk about what I saw and did.

This is not an exception, in Brooklyn nearly every flat surface looks like this. It’s incredible.

On Monday I woke up early in Williamsburg and got my first look at the city by daylight. I pointed my bike at Dumbo and started navigating the streets. I barely made it around the corner before I dismounted and started taking pictures. Everything was covered in graffiti. Everything. Here’s a mail truck for example:

As humans we are always on the lookout for signs of danger. We get used to clean neighborhoods. Spray paint on walls becomes a signal we associate with mischief that gets whitewashed before people have a chance to notice. In my home town of Loveland, Colorado the graffiti is usually ugly. There are occasional spots where skilled artists are practicing their craft, but mostly it’s embarrassingly juvenile. Half the time their four letter words are spelled wrong. In Brooklyn the graffiti is so thick it loses the “dangerous” signal midwesterners like me assign to it. But in Brooklyn it’s part of the fabric of the city, a proud symbol that the city is owned by everyone.

I love texture. In Loveland I have to seek it out. In Brooklyn it’s everywhere. And not just graffiti. The buildings are aged. Signs and ads are everywhere. Everything has worn to a patina that retains the marks of all the people who have worn it down. But this doesn’t feel like damage. I came away feeling like New York City was the world’s largest machine, a public utility that retains the character of the people who use it.

My bike and camera setup for exploring NYC

I quickly realized I would never make it out of Williamsburg if I stopped to take pictures of every beautiful surface. This meant riding my bike on the road. I bike in Colorado regularly and still this was scary. Most bikes in NYC are electric. Mine was not, which meant I was the slowest cyclist on the street. I did witness one accident, an e-bike hit a slick spot and slid into a wall. He was wearing a helmet and walked away from the crash but it could have been fatal.

The best way to see the city is by bike. Second best is subway. I can’t imagine driving there.

I don’t like being a tourist. My preferred way to see a city is to wander. I felt obligated to see the Statue of Liberty but other than that I didn’t see sights. I had a loose itinerary. I explored Dumbo and Brooklyn Bridge Park. I visited a skateboard park under Williamsburg Bridge. I took in the murals Bushwick. I saw the Navy yard. I took in Greenwich Village, Gotham Park, and Gleason’s Boxing Gym. I took the subway to Coney Island where I made a sticky note animation. I ate a donut in Central Park. I didn’t see any shows, museums, or games. This was the right choice for me.

I just realized it looks like I am taking a leak but I’m making art, I promise.

You may recall my sensitivity issues and how I managed them when I explored Las Vegas. While I did wear noise canceling airpods, NYC is so active that it wasn’t really safe to tune things out. In NYC the car horns aren’t just for road rage, they are an important safety signal that allows bikes to travel inches from traffic. Construction is everywhere. It’s loud but tuning it out is dangerous.

When the subway passes everything shakes. You can’t tell from the animation below, but this is a skateboard park below a bridge where the Subway passes overhead every few minutes.

How did I manage the sensory overload? I endured it. By the end of the day my senses were fried. But there is another component here that I hadn’t realized before. I spent most of my trip lost in the work. I had not connected the dots between being in a flow state and how this might relate to over stimulation. My new theory is that a state of flow pacifies my sensory system. Things that normally overwhelm me practically disappear when I am in the zone.

Here’s a comparison. If I were to see a Broadway show, my sensory system would be on fire. My dressy clothes would be irritating my skin. Standing in line would be torture. The theater seats would be torture. The show itself would be tough to sit through. Sights, sounds, smells… my body shifts into fight or flight mode. And yet, here I am on a bridge, there are cars below me, bikes passing me constantly, and a subway is flying by. I’m not even wearing noise cancelling headphones and I’m calm as a clam. I don’t know how to explain it other than my flow state pacifier theory. Perhaps this is why I crave the flow state, it is my way to escape the “danger” signals my nervous system overwhelms me with.

As I prepped for the trip I stressed about the amount of people in NYC. Normally I like to get away from people when I work. A person putting stickers on things is suspicious in small town Colorado. What would it be like when there are people everywhere?

Exactly four people asked me what I was doing in the five days I spent putting stickers up. One was a film student. Another was a photographer. The other two were walking their dogs. And I’m not counting the cops. I’ll get to that later.

Everyone is in their own world in NYC. They have places to go and they are constantly bombarded by things way more interesting than a guy with a camera. I was essentially invisible. Once I realize this, my social anxiety went away. I gradually shifted deeper and deeper into crowds of people. Nobody cared.

Above is an extreme example. I’m on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge for about 30 minutes taking pictures of the cracks in the paint. Hundreds of people passed me and not a single person questioned what I was doing.

Crowds of people can appear out of nowhere in NYC. I found a good spot for stickers that seemed relatively isolated. Little did I know that there was a school around the corner. A fire alarm was pulled and in seconds I was surrounded by a swarm of teenagers. I joked that it was a flashmob appearing to promote my tiny art show.

Honestly, the subway intimidated me. It wasn’t until my last day that I decided to go underground and give it a try. Like cycling in traffic it just took getting used to. And now that I’ve done it I understand the city so much more. Sure, there are questionable characters on the subway. And yes, I did see a large rat crawling under the tracks. But it’s just crowds of normal-ish people trying to get from A to B. And there were police nearby keeping things safe. This is where I get to tell you about my run-in with the law…

Subway vandalism

I wanted to put my stickers on the walls of the subway. A favorite song growing up was A Poem on the Underground Wall which tells the story of a graffiti artist who writes profanity on a subway wall.

I found a spot that felt relatively protected from the waves of people. It takes about 20-30 minute for me to do a setup like this. My first attempt went smoothly. The second time I tried it two police officers respectfully informed me that I couldn’t do that there. I politely asked if I could finish taking my pictures and they informed me that the problem wasn’t that I was taking pictures it was that my tripod wasn’t allowed. It impeded traffic, which is understandable.

Infestation of New York by Ade

Those of you who’ve followed me for a long time remember my Infestation project. My reserves of insect prints are practically empty but I couldn’t miss a chance to leave a butterfly, cicada, and dragonfly in New York. The butterfly landed on the pier of Coney Island. The cicada nested on the S of a subway sign. And the dragonfly infested a Donald Duck poster.

The remains of a poster on a Brooklyn wall

I also came home with a modest stack of collage material. Advertisements are pasted on walls, layer upon layer. I couldn’t resist bringing some debris home with me. Like so much I do, the plan comes later. I observe, gather, and reflect on things and inspiration may or may not come. Time will tell.

Normally I leave my stickers where they land. Since this project is associated with VICE TV and could potentially be considered vandalism, we decided I should remove the stickers after I photographed them. At first I was a bit disappointed by this. I wanted to “leave” my mark after all. My opinion changed after I started removing them. Often when I pulled the stickers up they would pull chips of paint or bits of debris off the walls. As I reclaimed my used stickers I realized that I was collecting artifacts of the city that I was bringing home with me.

I’m still figuring out what to do with my collection of used New York City stickers and the city debris they cling to. I’ve got ideas. Perhaps I’ll give them to paid subscribers. It’s a good metaphor though. I thought I was going to New York City to leave my mark. It turns out, the city is what left its mark on me.

If you’re wondering where you can see the finished product on VICE TV, it’s coming. I think the first animation is about to be broadcast in the coming days. The next one will be used in connection with the Brooklyn Film Festival at the end of May. I don’t want to preempt the official releases, but I will be posting things on Instagram (@ade3) as they get released to the world.

Thanks for reading. I’m so glad I can share this experience with you. Stay creative.

Your friend,

Ade

People who make it to the bottom tend to subscribe because they realize they are like me. Are you?

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Discussion about this post

James Hart

Penny Wagers May 16

So rad you got to do that. I hear you about sensory overload and the flow state antidote. That’s what I used to love about riding my bike in the city. It would put me in a flow state where I could just go with the sensory bombardment, but walking was another story. Congrats on such a cool opportunity.

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Michael Chesley Johnson

Painting to See May 17

A wonderful tale! My first time in NYC was in the 80s. I was living in rural VT at the time, a country mouse. I wandered the streets on foot, open-mouthed with wonder. Your word, “texture,” is exactly right and describes my experience.

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