Jenny Holzer will take over Times Square this World AIDS Day, on December 1, with her first solo installation at the New York landmark in over 40 years. The beloved text artist has chosen moving quotes about queer love and loss by writers like David Wojnarowicz, Noël Coward, Derek Jarman, Eileen Myles, Emily Dickinson, and Ricardo Hernandez, and these will appear from 5 p.m. on mobile LED trucks installed in the square. Later that night, at just a few minutes to midnight, Holzer will debut I Remember Joe Brainard, a new series animating text fragments from Joe Brainard‘s stream-of-consciousness memoir I Remember (1970), in tribute to the poet, who died in 1994. The series will return nightly throughout December.
Earlier that day, Times Square will host a six-hour-long public reading of the names of more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have lost their lives to AIDS. The one-day living memorial is organized by Holzer, Times Square Arts, and the New York City AIDS Memorial.