Graphic Journey Blog: Tom's NYC Against Sex Trafficking Journey blog 3.

Tom's NYC Against Sex Trafficking Journey blog 3.

Monday 9 November

Press day in Washington Square. Reporters arriving by the minute to interview Michael and Emma - who has already done morning TV shows. The day started off rather flat. No one really knowing what to do. Like the moments before a party, when everything is ready and you wonder if anyone will turn up. By 3 pm there is a tangible buzz developing. Lots of students at New York University bursting with searching questions. Keen to learn. Deeply sympathetic. We begin to sense a real difference between this location and Trafalgar Square – where many of the visitors were tourist or fallout from the National Gallery.

We are berated by a woman who arrives at the stand feigning interest but then turn on us. She has been making operatic entrances throughout the setting up. This is HER street and FILM CREWS and ROAD WORKS are INVADING HER SPACE and they are WRECKING WASHINGTON PARK and she is just SICK AND TIRED of the noise and NO ONE CONSULTED THE RESIDENTS…but despite us being a PAIN IN THE BUTT she really likes JOURNEY! She is terminally angry at the world and if we can win over people like this we must be doing something right.

Mid-afternoon a little man with a big voice appears out of the park and starts directing the pedestrians – mostly students going from class to class. Washington Square is a home for many wandering minstrels who enact a constant theatre in their heads, and who the city happily accommodates.

I accompany a small, frail but feisty New Yorker through JOURNEY. She tells me her parents were from Berlin and she just knew all about being a stranger in a strange country where you don’t speak the language or understand the culture. She studied every container minutely lingering long over every obscenity and turning to me, pointing with a barely suppressed fury. Walking through with her I start to see things in different ways. She could not see through the highest oval windows in UNIFORM exhibit, so I found myself in this shipping container, in this street, in New York describing the detail of leopard skin push-up bras, sequinned panties, and PVC G-strings.

James Ostrer appears who worked on the CUSTOMER container. Up until a few years ago he was painting scenery for a living, but was concussed by a falling structure and the incident made him re-think his life. His words and pictures of man porn is a stunning piece of work - on a par with the best fine art installations I have ever seen. We talk about why men abuse women. James says it is because they hate themselves and they take it out on others. I have been having many discussions in London about how FEAR of so many things, causes so many people, so many problems. Look out for Dr Bob Johnson on this subject.

Helen is being rushed off her feet but her knees are going. We conspire to glue her to her chair. Every time she sits down, someone else arrives wanting a piece of her. Every grim story she tells adds another dimension for me.

Here is a glimps of the inside of each of the 7 containers...