Midnight Moment is the world’s largest, longest-running digital art exhibition, synchronized on electronic billboards throughout Times Square nightly from 11:57 pm to midnight. Presented by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and curated by Times Square Arts since 2012, it has an estimated annual viewership of 2.5 million.

To an extent never before realized, William Kentridge, working with video editor Janus Fouché, has customized his Midnight Moment, To What End? (2019), for the precise dimensions and location of each of the electronic billboards that participate in the program, creating an immersive and various experience for viewers on the sidewalks and plazas of Times Square.

To What End? incorporates text and imagery from a chamber opera Kentridge conceived and created, Waiting for the Sibyl (2019). In his signature film style that captures the act of creating, erasing and revising his images, he animates trees, leaves, birds, Rorschach-like blots, people bearing strange loads, and a central image from Roman mythology — the Cumean Sybil, portrayed as a dancing woman. All these images are hand drawn or painted by Kentridge across the rapidly turning pages of dictionaries and classical literature.

To What End? is courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, and is presented by Times Square Arts in partnership with Gallery Met at The Metropolitan Opera on the occasion of its production of Alan Berg’s Wozzeck, directed by Kentridge and premiering 22 December 2019 through 22 January  2020. Video editing for To What End? is by Janus Fouché.