时代广场是全球访问量第一的地方，每天有36万名行人游客，年访问量超过1.31亿。这带来了年度零售、娱乐和酒店销售额达48亿美元，纽约市游客每花费一美元中就有22美分花在时代广场。

时代广场以其色彩斑斓的广告牌和广告而闻名，有时被称为“世界的十字路口”。这里有超过100个不同大小和形状的巨大屏幕争夺注意力，提供服务和产品。这些广告全年无休地同时展示，特点是时间短、颜色强烈、摄像机运动迅速、剪辑快速以及强烈的动态图形。时代广场的广告牌和屏幕是最受追捧且最昂贵的，只有最大的商业品牌才能负担得起。

“A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps”

《A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps》是由艺术家塞巴斯蒂安·埃拉苏里斯（Sebastian Errazuriz）为时代广场创作的特定场地视频装置。该项目是时代广场广告联盟（TSAC）和时代广场艺术每月呈现的Midnight Moment的一部分。该视频在时代广场内的大约50个不同屏幕上同时播放。

塞巴斯蒂安·埃拉苏里斯的这段三分钟视频通过极其缓慢的步伐和仅使用黑白画面与周围环境形成鲜明对比。没有摄像机移动、编辑切割或动态图形。视频展示了艺术家近距离慢慢环顾四周并在整个过程中多次打哈欠的画面。同步播放的慢速黑白打哈欠图像主导并暂时改变了时代广场的环境。许多观看屏幕的游客突然发现自己被引导着与艺术家一起打哈欠，从而引发周围的人也跟着传染性地打哈欠。

这段视频可以被解读为艺术家对周围压倒性的市场系统进行的一次和平而个人化的抗议行为。打哈欠视频的传染特性似乎故意设计成让其他人也跟着他一起打哈欠，仿佛他们是自愿每晚聚集起来加入艺术家的抗议活动。

塞巴斯蒂安·埃拉苏里斯表示，他希望这段视频能提供一个短暂的停顿时刻，提醒我们迫切需要自由的空间和时间，以恢复更强的意识感。当被问及这个项目是否严格批判市场时，他表示自己也对当前艺术市场上影响了许多当代艺术创作的现象感到厌倦。“我在向一切和所有人打哈欠；我们需要醒来。”

Times Square is the number-one visited place globally with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million visitors a year. This translates into $4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar spent by visitors in New York City being spent within Times Square.

Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as "The Crossroads of the World. Over 100 different sized and shaped giant screens compete for attention offering services and products. The ads displayed simultaneously 24 hours a day 365 days a year are characterized by their short time frames, intense colors, camera movements, fast editing and strong motion graphics. The Times Square billboards and screens are the most coveted and expensive and are only affordable by the biggest commercial brands.

“A Pause in the City that Never Sleeps” is a site-specific video installation created by artist Sebastian ErraZuriz for Times Square. The project is part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts. The video is shown simultaneously in approximately 50 different screens within Times Square.

The 3-minute video by Sebastian ErraZuriz contrasts with its environment by being extremely slow paced and filmed exclusively in black and white. There are no camera movements, no editing cuts and no motion graphics. The video portrays a close up of the artist slowly looking around him and yawning multiple times during the whole duration of the video. The simultaneous projections of slow black and white images of the yawning figure dominate and momentarily transform the environment of Times Square. Many of the visitors looking at the screens find themselves suddenly coerced into joining the artist in yawning, consequently getting others around them to contagiously yawn too.

The video can be interpreted as a peaceful and personal act of protest by the artist against the overwhelming market system that he is surrounded by. The contagious character of the yawn video seems purposely designed to get others to yawn with him and appear as if they had voluntarily gathered every night to join the artist in his protest.

Sebastian ErraZuriz expressed that he hopes the video can offer a brief moment of pause that can remind us of our urgent necessity for free space and time that can allow us to recover a stronger sense of awareness. When asked if the project was strictly criticizing the market, he expressed he also finds himself tired of how the art market in influencing much of the current artistic production.

"I'm yawning at everything and all of us; we need to wake up"