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Mouths
Find Freedom In Big Megaphone
by Anne Kadet
Crossing Foley
Square, passersby can’t help but notice a 15-foot, candy- red megaphone
aimed at the nearby government buildings. It is an art installation, of
course, a statement about the expressive power of the individual. On a recent
Saturday afternoon, Lucy Ryan, 7, made her way up the ramp to the mouth
of the megaphone. Taking a deep breath, she stood on her tiptoes and shouted
to the world: “Mommy! Let’s go home!”
Her mother, Gina Ryan, stood underneath, squinting up at the sculpture as
her son, 4-year-old Aidan, took his own turn: “You’re fired!”
he yelled into the megaphone. And then, inexplicably, “You’re
going to jail for a hundred million billion years! Until you die!”
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The sculpture, called Freedom of _Expression National Monument,
is the work of Erika Rothenberg. On display through Nov. 13, it
was commissioned by Creative Time, which said in a statement that
the megaphone provides “a forum for dialogue on the dynamics
of free speech, power and powerlessness, and a multiplicity of social
and cultural concerns.”
William Quinn, a 15-year-old Staten Islander, was the first speaker
of the afternoon to use the platform for protest, though it was
of a rather general nature: “Noooooooo,” he bellowed into
the megaphone. He stopped, seemed to consider his statement, and
then reapplied himself: “Noooooooooooooooooo.” Gaining
momentum, he shouted, “Save me Stewart!” Quinn later indicated
that there was no such person as Stewart.
“I just said that ’cuz my mom was watching, and I can’t
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say bad things,” he explained.
Asked to clarify, he gave a scornful look. “You know,” he
said, “R-rated things.”
But another teenager, Chris Petroncio, who sped over to the megaphone
on his skateboard, had no parents nearby to quash his first amendment
rights. “Bitches and Hos!” he shouted. This made him laugh
for a long time, and so he yelled it again, and again, and again.
Growing bored, he ran down the platform, clambered up the face of
the sculpture and crawled right into the megaphone, where he sat,
cross-legged, looking over the square. His skateboarding companions
lit cigarettes and regarded him from below. “He’s an idiot,”
said one.
A family of Japanese tourists took turns peering through the mouth
of the megaphone at its new occupant.
Matt Finnell, visiting from Desert Hot Springs, Calif., took the megaphone,
raised his hands and announced, “I am not a crook!” Another
out-of-towner, Gregory Bondillo, from upstate New York, proclaimed
his travel plans: “I am leaving this godforsaken country for
Istanbul,” he shouted. Approached by a reporter, he grew worried.
“I’m not really going because this country’s godforsaken,”
he hastily explained. “I’m going to teach English. I was
just being goofy. I really don’t think it’s godforsaken!”
The afternoon’s only political speaker was Jeff Simmons, who
swaggered up the platform and shouted, “Hello everybody! We should
have peace in this world! Like that, right? No more war!” He
peered across the street. “Is anybody listening out there?”
In the distance, mothers plodded by with strollers, cops patrolled
the courthouse steps, hot dog vendors leaned against their carts.
“Ah, nobody listening,” Simmons said. He turned and strolled
back down to the street. “I got to go.”
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