What is a city? What would you say makes a city a good place to live? Have you ever imagined your city 50 or even 100 years from now?
These and other thought provoking questions are the focus of a new public art installation in downtown Palo Alto that is designed to get busy Palo Altans to stop, look and ponder and discuss what it means to live in our unique city. This temporary installation by Oakland-based artist Anthony Discenza, features 20 questions attached to signposts around Palo Alto that he hopes will encourage busy Palo Altans to engage in broader ideas and consider the future of the city.
Artist Anthony Discenza
Anthony Discenza received his Masters in Film and Video from California College of the Arts and his Bachelors in Studio Art from Wesleyan University. His work is described as being, “directed by a preoccupation with interrupting the flow of information in various formats.” His art has been presented widely, including with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the United Nations Pavilion in Shanghai, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Australian Center for the Moving Image, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Getty Center and the University of California Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.
To take a tour of these questions, follow this map that shows where all the signs are posted. A list of the questions are available here but it’s much more fun to check them out on the streets of Palo Alto.
The signs were installed in October 2014 and will be up for viewing, discussion and contemplation for about six months as part of the City of Palo Alto’s temporary public art program.
