Voir la mer

Sophie Calle

French Institute Alliance Francaise, Crossing the Line

In partnership with French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) as part of Crossing the Line Festival 2017, Times Square Arts presents artist Sophie Calle’s Voir la mer on Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 p.m. to midnight every night in October. This project is a part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts.

In Istanbul, a city surrounded by the sea, Sophie Calle met people who had never seen the water. Voir la mer silently reveals their emotional response to the experience of visiting the seashore for the first time, as they stared at the edge of the Black Sea before turning around. Magnified on Times Square’s electronic billboards, five of these intimate video portraits evoke the universal power and poetry of watching the infinite.

Photographs courtesy of Ka-Man Tse.