Indecisive Suicides Saluted With Statuary

New Yorkers, who are so often stuck at the intersection between life and art (usually because the traffic signal is broken), have another issue to contend with: A series of statues that will be placed on building across the city-and, less worryingly, in Madison Square Park-is already confusing residents, some of whom are concerned that life-sized sculptures are actually jumpers.

Artist Antony Gormley-best known for Britain’s massive Angel of the North–says of the installation,

I don’t know what is going to happen, what it will look and feel like, but I want to play with the city and people’s perceptions. My intention is to get the sculptures as close to the edge of the buildings as possible. The field of the installation should have no defining boundary. The gaze is the principle dynamic of the work; the idea of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, and in the process perhaps re-assessing your own position in the world. So in encountering these peripheral things, perhaps one becomes aware of one’s status of embedment.

Sure thing, buddy! Anyway, this being New York, the story would not be complete without a reference to Our Greatest Tragedy.

Malcolm Sparrow, a former law enforcement official who now teaches law enforcement officials management skills at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said he had not seen the figures but thought they would cause problems.

“If it’s modern art, I think it’s in poor taste for residents of New York City,” because of the “memory of people jumping off buildings,” he said, referring to people who leapt to their deaths from the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.

As someone who is still traumatized by the memory of all those painted fiberglass cows from years back, I guess I can see his point.