Through Oct. 5, commuters making their way through the crowds at 14 subway stations throughout New York may notice a new type of announcement on the public address system. “What we hear changes how we feel. How we feel changes what we do. And what we do changes the world around us, even if just for a moment,” one says.
Some sound like snippets of overheard conversations: “Remember when Aretha Franklin died and people were singing her songs together on crowded train cars?”
Each will end with the words “If you hear something, free something,” which is also the title of this ambitious public art project by the conceptual artist Chloë Bass.
It’s a play on the familiar, post-9/11 messaging, “If you see something, say something.” Bass turns around the instruction to be ever-vigilant in the face of threat, coaxing us instead “to return to ourselves in public space, and to experience it as a place where we engage with others instead of only being suspicious of others.”
The project is a collaboration among Bass, the public art organization Creative Time and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts & Design department. The M.T.A. has had a robust public art program over the years, including the mosaics that decorate subway stations around the city — Bass herself did one in 2024 in Brooklyn. But this is the first time they’ve allowed an artist to broadcast over the M.T.A.’s public address system.
