Housing Is a Human Right
March 1989

Times Square Spectacolor signboard animation, 1:10 min.
Public Art Fund, New York

This work was made for a commission from the Public Art Fund in 1989 as part of its Messages to the Public series. Each month from 1982 to 1992 the Public Art Fund presented an animated work by a contemporary artist, which appeared about fifty times a day on the central electronic sign in Times Square, interspersed with commercial advertising. Rosler's contribution displayed budget figures detailing cuts to federally funded low-income housing in the United States in the 1980s and the related rise in homelessness. The work highlighted the interrelated issues of speculation, gentrification, and the abandonment of buildings, using existing infrastructure and mass-media techniques to deliver its urgent message. The medium and the location represent competing market interests: Times Square had long functioned as a center of New York City tourism but by the 1980s had fallen into decay and had become a place where many homeless or underhoused people congregated. Its famous lights, admired for decades for their kaleidoscopic dazzle, are advertisements.