In the Fall of 1992 I heard the statistic that Super Sunday is the worst day of the year for women being battered. I began to think about ways to use that fact in a work of art to raise awareness of the issue of domestic violence. I finally came up with a simple piece: a manually operated scoreboard with three scores. The first two were the team scores (Dallas and Buffalo) and the third was the number of women battered since opening kickoff. The 'battered women score' would increment every fifteen seconds - the statistical rate women are battered in this country.
I received permission from Metro Commuter North to do the piece in New York's Grand Central Terminal and on January 27, 1993 I presented for the first time Super Bowl Scoreboard.
The response was overwhelming in terms of media attention, support from local organizations and the interest and support of passers by. It has been cosponsored by the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women, NOW New York, Victim Services and New York Men Against Sexism. The piece has became a more or less annual event and was presented again in 1994 (in collaboration with artist Rebecca Graves) and 1996 (in 1995 I presented The 1995 Witness to Violence Project).
The Super Bowl is a sporting event, a mock combat, which has one of the largest audiences in the world. Women are battered at an alarming rate in the United States (one every fifteen seconds), but the real combat of domestic violence is kept almost hidden. With Super Bowl Scoreboard I juxtapose the results of the broadcast mock violence and the hidden real violence. The task of updating the number of women battered by physically hanging numbers on a scoreboard is a non-stop process for over two hours. The changing of the team scores seems a rare interlude to this constant changing of the 'battered women score'.
I don't know why battering increases on Super Sunday. It may have to do with the fact that men drink more on this day. It may have to do with an increase in testosterone watching big men slam their bodies against each other. It may be something else entirely. My concern is to create a performance which makes watchers aware of the situation and pushes them to try to understand why this is so.
It is the purpose of art, I believe, to confront, to challenge, to force the viewer to see and think about the world in a new and more profound way. It is my hope that this piece will be one of many events that will influence people to envision and work for a world where women and children are respected and cared for, and where they cease to be victims of brutality.
There is much controversy over whether there really is an increase in domestic violence on Super Sunday. The purpose of the piece is to raise awareness on the issue of domestic violence not to argue this point. The Super Bowl game is more or less a hook to grab people's attention. This being said, following are some references about this issue. Much of the evidence is anecdotal.