Who Is The Third Who Walks Always Beside You? (2020/2024)
Site-specific audio installation with >30 minutes of audio content, triggered through publicly posted QR codes
West Village, New York City
at least a dozen installation sites, all located to the north of Barrow Street; to the east of West Street; to the west of Hudson Street; and to the south of Little West 12th Street, and the extension of its line to Hudson Street.
Originally opened on May 21, 2020. Signage re-mounted on March 29, 2024.
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Who Is The Third Who Walks Always Beside You? is a site-specific audio installation in the West Village of New York City, originally mounted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The audio content of the installation consists of monologues that collectively trace the wanderings of three characters as they make their way through a once-familiar landscape that has suddenly been transformed beyond recognition. Transfixed and nonplussed, these characters attempt in their own distinct ways to come to grips with the unexpected disjuncture between an accustomed past and an uncertain future.
The title of the installation is taken from a passage in Part V of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding
Wrapped in a brown mantle
Hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
But who is that on the other side of you?
The sensation of a heavy, unknown presence is a unifying theme across the characters’ stories. As in Eliot’s poem, the identity of “the third who walks always beside you” remains elusive, at times taking on the guises of death, conscience, memory, faith, and the unknowability of the other. The monologues and the characters who give them voice are fictional, but in various ways the stories intersect with the complexities of the present moment and the ever-changing history of the West Village.
The installation consists of a number of separate sites, each marked by a publicly posted QR code. By scanning a particular QR code, a visitor can access the sound clip that is “installed” at that location. Some of the QR codes are placed on custom-made signs that are prominently posted around the West Village, but others are placed more discreetly on smaller stickers, some in locations so obscure that they may never be found. All of the QR codes are accessible from the street or from public spaces; visitors need not (and should not) enter buildings or private property in search of elements of the installation.
Visitors are only made aware that the installation consists of “at least a dozen” sites. The true number will never be publicly revealed; no map of the installation sites will be made publicly available; and the project’s webpage does not link to any of the audio content. These features of the installation will activate the surrounding neighborhood as a public space in a unique way. Some visitors may approach the installation as though it were a kind of treasure hunt, while others may encounter only one or a few of the sites in the course of their usual movements. In either case, the installation weaves a separate, fictive reality over the neighborhood’s expanse of familiar streets and buildings. Because some of the QR codes are difficult to find, visitors will inevitably remain uncertain whether they have heard “the whole story,” in a way that is evocative of the fleeting natures of memory and human understanding. In total, the project provides more than 30 minutes of audio content, and extends over an area of approximately 70 acres.
The installation was conceived, prepared, and mounted in Spring 2020, the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. During this time, non-essential businesses were closed and social distancing guidelines were being enforced. Residents, however, were allowed to leave home for walks and other forms of exercise. The structure and timing of the installation were meant to give New Yorkers the opportunity to engage a complex new artwork in socially distanced solitude at a time when cultural institutions around the city remained almost universally closed. While the COVID pandemic was likely at the front of visitors’ minds during this time, an accumulation of details from the stories suggests that the characters were confront with a wholly different kind of disaster.
The installation was re-mounted in Spring 2024. Some aspects of the built environment changed in the intervening years, so certain details of the site-specific stories may no longer be reflected in the installation’s surroundings.
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Special thanks to Ashley Wren Collins, Laris Macario, and PJ Sosko, who played the roles of X, Y, and Z, respectively.
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