American Idle

American Idle constructs a choreographic score of public behavior in one of the world’s most iconic, and most photographed, urban landmarks. Mirroring the 24/7 loop of billboard ads, the piece explores a world of repetition and copies—of gestures, images, and selves. It examines how this spectacle-driven environment homogenizes collective behavior, compelling the constant performance of the self for the ever-present camera. In this feedback loop of image and enactment, one’s experience gives way to its representation. The piece meditates on the beauty and suffering of our contemporary condition—fractured attention, techno-mediation, sensory overload, and excess—magnified by the hyperreality of Times Square.