“I get down on my belly and crawl till I’m reality,” Pope.L once said. This video documents a multipart performance during which Pope.L dragged his body along the entire length of Broadway in New York City. For each performance, he dressed in a capeless Superman costume and knit cap, strapped a skateboard to his back, and crawled for as long as he could. When the pain became unbearable, he would turn on his back and roll on the skateboard before starting to crawl again. He characterized these actions as a “response to the steady increase of street people occupying the sidewalks of New York City and the community’s refusal to recognize this calamity.”

In 2001 in New York City, beneath the Statue of Liberty – an emblem of freedom and hope—Pope.L again crawled in his Superman costume until a police officer ordered him to stop and return to the ferry. Although he had a permit to film and perform on the island, the officer insisted it did not apply because Pope.L was not permitted to drag himself across Liberty Island in costume.

This scene from The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street is emblematic of how Pope.L points toward the possibility of a world in which relationships among ourselves, our environment, and each other can be different. He embraces and embodies the uncomfortable contradictions we tend to shy away from and shows the possibility that exists in them. In his reframing of the world, contradiction brings clarity and vulnerability is a superpower. “It’s not that I have the arrogance to believe that I know what should be done,” he has said, “in fact, I’m afraid of the responsibility, but something should be done. And if I can construct works that allow people to enter themselves, thus, enter the mess—then it’s a collaboration and maybe, possibly, who knows, why not—I’ve nudged something.”

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As found on MoMA’s website.