This starts in less than a half hour:

On Tuesday, August 11th at noon, there will begin a 24-hour performance/reading in Occidental Park in Pioneer Square - Occidental Ave. S. & S. Main St. A box truck will be stationed at the park with a PA system, as well as an accompanying Elephant Ear vendor.

In this performance, D.K. Pan, NKO and Holly Brown explore the intimate relationship between reader, author and text. Featuring the words of Haruki Murakami’s “Wild Sheep Chase” ... two ‘authors’ transcribe the novel as it is read aloud: one pens on the exterior of the box truck (which serves as stage and ‘literary vehicle’), the other types the text on an endless roll of paper. The reader will be stationed atop the box truck, audible via a PA system. Accompanying the performance will be the Hanley Family Elephant Ear stand providing deep-fried goodness.

This overnight, endurance performance serves to highlight and expose the intensely private acts of reading and writing along with the conflicting desires they engender. The relationships of voice, hand,
and typewriter become intertwined in the act of imprinting memory onto a public site. A silent transformation occurs, unnoticed. A box truck becomes an elephant, text escapes the confines of its pages; we awake from a dream and find ourselves at the beginning of a journey. Murakami’s tale of search, longing, and reconciliation serves as the point of departure for this performance action.

Who's behind this? Why Susie Lee, the artist who created a giant rain storm inside Lawrimore Project in 2007. She and Elizabeth Umbanhowar co-curated the event for Seattle Parks & Rec's ArtSparks program.

This is the kind of antidote I was talking about:

The biggest aesthetic category missing from Seattle's public-art scene today is ephemerality. Almost every new commission is for a permanent installation made out of some material that will last longer than earth itself. Time-based and temporary works, which can be more adventurous and inject life into a city, are few and far between. (London has the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, where sculptures rotate in and out and create plenty of debate; New York has eyebrow-raising projects like the 100-foot-tall artificial waterfalls in New York Harbor last summer, by Olafur Eliasson—though it's worth noting that the waterfalls were not commissioned by the government but by one of New York's two major, privately funded organizations devoted to public art.)

Art that doesn't last can be a tough sell to taxpayers. But so can any kind of contemporary art. In 1991, the City of Seattle put on a popular festival that mixed temporary and permanent public works in honor of the opening of Seattle Art Museum's Robert Venturi building. It generated essential works, including Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man—which still provokes discussion about social class—and brought people together around not just an object, but a moment in time. There are all kinds of benefits to short-lived works, including less pressure, so they can introduce new artists, new blood, to public art.

"Maybe we have let some aspects of a really vital program languish here," admits Cath Brunner, head of public art at King County's arts wing, 4Culture.

But she's quick to point out that her department is already on the case.

"Our whole new focus this year has been to offer more ephemeral work," she says.

Apparently her office is not the only one.