4: It’s time

In the begin­ning of March 2003 the US Gov­ern­ment announced a speech by G.W. Bush where he would address the nation about there progress with Irak. The US would prob­a­bly give an last ulti­ma­tum to Iraq and then go to war if there require­ments are not meet. If I could get a Bill­board up in Times Square right before the speach, I might get a lot of media atten­tion. A week before this speech, I start­ed to look with my agent for pos­si­ble bill­board spaces in Times Square. It was­nt easy for me beause I had to divide my time between work and the project, but we man­aged to get it going. On tues­day we found a bill­board­space on 42nd street next to Madam Tus­sauds that fit my bud­get. Mid­week I got togeth­er with some friends to brain­storm about some addi­tion­al art­work ideas, just to be shure to get the best out the sit­u­a­tion. On Thurs­day I final­ized a sim­ple ver­sion of the orig­i­nal „ I love you“ Art­work Idea. I send it for approval to New York, and in the evening a friend helped me to do a press release and inform the media. That day I cre­at­ed a first obsti­cal, I changed the art­work to «We are made by love not war» instead just «LOVE».  I changed it, because I had a lot of respons­es from peo­ple who said  «LOVE» is just not enough, there should be an anti­war mes­sage.  But then the Art­work was not approved by the Bill­board Com­pa­ny, and I changed it back to «LOVE». I was glad that that hap­pend, because that’s what I want­ed orig­i­nal­ly. That evening my agent told me that they need­ed more mon­ey for installing the Bill­board, because they had to block off 42nd Street with a truck and need­ed more peo­ple to install it: + 4000 U$. That blew my bud­get. All of my sav­ings to finance the bill­board were all­ready used and I had only lit­tle spon­sor­ing. A friend of mine in New York then helped me that evening to find the mon­ey. He orga­nized 10 Peo­ple who each would give 400 Dol­lar for a Spon­sor­ing on the Bill­board. Thats how the names got there place on the Art­work. To get the bill­board pro­duced and hung up by mon­day I  trans­fered all my mon­ey on Fri­day After­noon to New York. That put my bankac­count to 0. The same evening our local news­pa­per came by to run a sto­ry for the Sat­ur­day issue. On Sat­ur­day I took a plane to New York. I also had my roo­mate come along to sup­port me on loca­tion. Every­thing was a last minute impro­vi­sa­tion, but we man­aged to find a nice hotel in New York and hat a great Sat­ur­day night out at the liv­ing room in New York.