ONLY YOU
Installation/Archival ResearchSarah Dunham
2024 Summer Residency Fellow
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT︎︎︎
SARAH DUNHAM IS ASKING YOU TO FIND YOURSELF IN THE MESSAGE
Interview between 2024 Summer Fellow Sarah Dunham and Deborah Garcia
January 20, 2025
Sarah Dunham is a Partner at MTWTF and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Pratt Institute’s Graduate Communications Design program. Sarah’s work explores how communication design can contribute to a more sustainable future: one with a rich public realm and the opportunity to take risks that benefit our shared environment rather than the economy.
DG:
Can you tell us a bit more about your project, ONLY YOU?
SD:
This project is part of an ongoing inquiry into how we learn about public space through Public Service Announcements (PSAs) in the United States. At the Block House on Governors Island, a series of banners are hung on the facade.
DG:
What is the origin of the term, “only you” in your work?
SD:
This particular series of banners echo the design of a PSA (defined as a message that is in the public interest) from the country’s longest-running campaign. A recognizable figure in our media ecosystem - Smokey the Bear - has accompanied eighty years of messages encouraging Americans to take care within our federal forest lands. However, in this installation, his image has been removed. [And only the main text of the PSA is left as a powerful graphic.”
![SMOKEY THE BEAR, PSA]()
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DG:
What do you hope the reciever of this message walks away with when they see your installation?
SD:
By de-contextualizing the rhetorical message of this PSA, this project asks us to consider the role that a mascot plays in articulating our understanding of what is in public interest. What about the solitariness of ‘only’ is in the public interest? And, who are ‘you’ in this message?
People
