2005-2007 | NYC
The first Art Parade was organized by Good Sense for Deitch Projects in 2005, and was crammed into a few blocks on Grand Street. Everyone had a ball, so it was repeated in 2006, but at twice the size and length and in a different location: down West Broadway from West Houston Street to Grand. In 2007, The Art Parade took the same route and added still more participants: more than 800 artists who conceived, constructed, carried, wore or performed some 82 mobile works of art.
Veterans of the parade returned year after year. Kenny Scharf's art cars... Yoko Ono... Damien Hirst... Fischerspooner, with their electric mylar dance-rock floats... Kembra Pfahler’s band of blue-skinned furies, the Girls of Karen Black, moving down West Broadway at a funereal pace, bloody dolls clutched in their arms.. the Malcolm X Shabazz High School marching band... Sexy Cops... local legend-in-the-works Swoon... Nick van Woert’s Bobble Head Collective, with its giant crazed stockbroker masks... Steve Powers aka ESPO reprising his 2005 inflatable black limousine in 2007, a salute to celebrity gas guzzling... and so many more.
The Dazzle Dancers, with their colossal “DD” float, always make a memorable impression, both for their anarchic choreography and their continuing commitment to battle, as their online manifesto says, “the forces of blandness, fear, and isolation so common in our clenched culture of coffee franchises, fear marketing and money worship.” The manifesto also emphasizes that they prefer to work nude, but they dressed up (sort of) for this occasion. Fitting representatives of the Art Parade.
Check out the video and gallery below:
