Inside Out Project

JR

Times Square Advertising Coalition, Inside Out

Midnight Moment celebrated its first anniversary in 2013 by turning the Crossroads of the World into a creative hub featuring a film of artist JR’s large-scale participatory Inside Out Project, created especially for Times Square's screens. This short film was a mashup of Inside Out’s global art actions and used footage from the documentary film Inside Out: The People's Project, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired on HBO in 2013.

Screening of the three-minute film overlapped with Inside Out New York City, a concurrent installation of JR’s large-scale participatory project, which featured the creation of self-portrait posters by visitors to New York, and the plastering of Duffy Square with these images.   

The artist has realized projects across the world in many cities and environments: favelas in Brazil, trains in Kenya, walls in the West Bank, and most recently in Berlin. Inside Out New York City engaged all five boroughs of New York, with the photo booth truck making early visits to the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens and Brooklyn. The initial portraits pasted in Times Square featured community members from New York City neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy—the Staten Island waterfront, the Rockaways and Red Hook. The photo booth truck was open daily from noon to 8p.m. in Duffy Square and portraits were free.