Chloë Bass Turns the City Subway into a Monument to the Power of Human Storytelling

Sound is perhaps the medium capable of reaching the broadest audience—at least until it becomes a linguistic or codified message. For this reason, it ought to be the most effective form of public art. Yet few large-scale works operate within the sonic dimension, especially when set against the bustling, buzzing landscape of a city like New York. Artist Chloë Bass has taken on this challenge, embedding her public artwork as frequencies that disrupt the ordinary flow of communication, miscommunication and noise that define one of New York’s most crowded spaces: the subway system.

If you hear something, free something is a public sound project by Chloë Bass, presented by Creative Time and MTA Arts & Design. For the first time, art not only adorns the century-old, mostly decadent MTA infrastructure but takes over the space through frequencies and storytelling, moving through stations as both sound and message. Through October 5, Bass’s sonic work plays intermittently in key station mezzanines, overlapping with MTA announcements and reaching hundreds of thousands of riders to introduce a moment of poetry and wonder.

Although Bass is no stranger to public work, this is her first time operating through sound. Recently, she has grown increasingly interested in developing new forms of monuments. What does it mean to create a monumental gesture that is ephemeral, even fleeting—something experienced only through direct encounter, not just with space but also with time? Those were the guiding reflections that led her to this piece.

“I’ve lived in New York my entire life, and for me, the place where you reach the most people has always been public transit,” she tells Observer. “If you think of a monument as a matter of scale, transit itself is already a moving monument, for better and for worse.” For Bass, intervening in the soundscape of that system meant creating a temporary yet powerful gesture—one that lingers even as it vanishes.

Bass’s intervention is radically ephemeral, and through its very transience, it confronts the daily chaos of New York’s public transit system—exposing its confusing, often miscommunicated nature. To resist this cacophony, most riders retreat into self-contained soundscapes by wearing headphones. Yet the subway is also a prime site of encounters—with “the other,” with the spectrum of people who make up New York. Headphones can insulate riders from that relational, interactional dimension, preserving their private bubble at the cost of connection.

The piece both confronts and embraces these dynamics, drawing out the tension between them. “It’s fine if people need to use their headphones on the train. It’s also fine if they miss these announcements; many riders never hear them, and that’s okay too,” the artist reflects. “But for those who do catch them, it becomes a small encounter that feels different, even special—an invitation to engage with the space and with each other in a new way.” In this context, wearing headphones becomes a missed opportunity—not only to hear the work, but, as in daily life, to encounter another person’s story and perspective.

Bass points out that New York’s subway is already rich with storytelling. Even the MTA posts signs that say, “Don’t become someone’s subway story,” intended to police behavior—don’t do something others will later recount, whether as an annoyance or a punchline. For Bass, though, that phrase reveals the space’s untapped potential. “We are always telling stories about what happens to us on public transportation, and that’s a good thing,” Bass says. “It’s part of what brings us together—sharing how we commute, what happens on our way, and the people we encounter who are different from us. These experiences take us outside ourselves and remind us that we’re part of something larger.”

In conceiving this sound piece, Bass set out to create counter-announcements—ones distinct from the MTA’s, which often use sound as a tool of control and surveillance. “As I was writing them, I kept asking what the existing announcements actually do. Most are a single voice telling you how to behave, reminding you the police are present, or announcing where you are and what the next stop is,” she notes. In response, she introduced content and sonic textures those announcements never include. Some are dialogues, voiced by two or three speakers. Others feature humming or singing layered beneath the words, adding dimension beyond language. Most importantly, none of them tells you what to do. “They’re not about monitoring your behavior or anyone else’s; they’re about opening another kind of space,” explains Bass.

To foster a more accessible and inclusive environment, Bass’s sonic work plays in multiple languages—English, Spanish, Arabic, Bangla, Haitian Kreyòl and Mandarin—mirroring the cultural and linguistic diversity that defines New York City. To further support accessibility, ASL translations of all announcements are available as videos on Creative Time’s website.

By chance, one of the Mandarin announcements played during an early test. “An older Asian couple happened to be walking by where we were testing,” Bass recounts. “They had no idea anything was going on, and when the Mandarin announcement came over the speaker, they both looked startled at first—and then suddenly excited. It was really moving to witness that reaction.”

That moment also underscores a broader issue: the MTA’s own announcements rarely accommodate such diversity, reinforcing cultural and linguistic barriers that often go unnoticed yet carry real consequences. To ensure her announcements resonated—grounding listeners in something familiar or offering a sense of ease—Bass developed the work in deep collaboration with community members, making it participatory from the outset. She organized focus groups with a cross-section of regular transit users, including teens, adults, transit advocates and MTA workers. Each of the 24 poetic announcements begins with a custom tone, designed by Bass in collaboration with artist Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and delivered by a mix of professional performers and everyday New Yorkers.

It’s notable that an artist like Bass—known for a multidimensional practice rooted in public sculpture and performance—has chosen to tap into sound. Her decision reflects a broader shift, as sound-based works increasingly appear at biennials and exhibitions, with artists turning to storytelling, oral traditions and immersive sonic environments. This move can be seen as a response to the current moment: in a culture saturated with visuals—where both images and text risk becoming white noise—sound still has the power to cut through, offering emotional resonance within the narrow span of attention of an increasingly desensitized audience.

Bass sees several reasons for this shift. “The oversaturation in visual culture is true—we’re constantly bombarded with images. But honestly, we’re oversaturated in almost every sensory dimension these days,” she notes. “What’s unique about sound is how it engages us differently—how it moves through the body, how it hits the emotions.”

There’s also a pragmatic aspect. Sound allows artists to create impactful public works with fewer materials and lower production costs. “It’s an expensive time to be alive, and if you can work in forms that aren’t so materially heavy, that’s helpful for artists economically.”

Still, as Bass’s piece makes clear, sound is uniquely powerful in public space because of its universality. It can transcend language and audience barriers more fluidly than many other forms.

Chloë Bass’s If you hear something, free something continues through October 5, 2025, in the following subway stations:

• Bronx: Westchester Square (6) and 167 Street (B, D)
• Queens: Court Square (7, G), 74th Street – Broadway (7), and Mets Willets Point (7)
• Brooklyn: Clinton-Washington Avenues (G), Fort Hamilton Parkway (F, G), York Street (F), and Atlantic Avenue / Barclays Center (2,3,4,5).
• Manhattan: Grand Central (S), 5th Avenue, Bryant Park (7), Fulton Street (4,5), 163 Street Manhattan (A, C), and Union Square (4,5,6).