Enjoy a day of frank conversation, hearty debate, and an impressive lineup of panels and performance organized by dynamic artist duo Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw for their public art commission Hot Dog in the City. Food historians, competitive eaters, street vendors, sausage makers, authors, activists, and artists draw unexpected parallels between the history of the hot dog and capitalism, consumption, and politics of the American dream.
Participants include comedian and author Jaime Loftus (Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs); feminist-vegan writer and activist Carol J. Adams (The Sexual Politics of Meat); food historian Krishnendu Ray, PhD; and Mohamed Attia of Street Vendors Project. Evocative and lively interludes include The Jungle, an operatic presentation on the underbelly of the meat-packing industry; and a condiment-themed debate by the high schoolers of The NY Parliamentary Debate League.
Join us in unpacking the critical issues beneath the skin of an unassuming package.
About Hot Dog in the City
Times Square Arts is pleased to present Hot Dog in the City, a 65 foot-long public art installation by the dynamic artist duo Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw. Equal parts spectacle, celebration, and critique, the project supersizes the hot dog as an iconic symbol of New York City and American culture to examine class, consumption, capitalism, and the myths of the American Dream. Hot Dog in the City builds upon Catron and Outlaw’s renowned conceptual practice, which spans elaborate large-scale sculptures to kinetic installations and immersive experiences often infused with humor and camp to prompt cultural and political commentary.
Throughout the duration of the project, Catron, Outlaw and Times Square Arts will activate the sculpture and its surroundings with public programs that explore the complexities, conflicting views, and absurdities and lore of the hot dog in New York City and America.
The project will be on view in Times Square’s largest plaza, Duffy Square, from April 30 to June 13, 2024.
About Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw
Jen Catron (b. 1984, Bluford, Illinois) and Paul Outlaw (b. 1980, Fairhope, Alabama) are collaborative artists who create elaborately staged, large-scale sculptures, kinetic installations, participatory experiences and immersive environments that oscillate between the tragic and absurd. The two first met and joined forces while studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art located outside of Detroit, Michigan. After graduation, they relocated their art practice to Brooklyn, New York, where they continue to live and work. The duo often uses humor, camp, and spectacle as a subtle veil for subversion and shaded view of the American Dream. Through object-making, performance, painting, video, and animatronics, their layered conceptual works become a genuinely playful and entertaining platform for pointed cultural and political commentary. Catron and Outlaw have shown their work in institutions and galleries such as the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Postmasters Gallery.
About Times Square Arts
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity.
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Support for Hot Dog in the City is provided in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.