Take Me Somewhere | Paul Ramírez Jonas - Public Trust

Outside GoMA
17 October 2025 | 11.00am to 5.00pm
18 October 2025 | 10.00am to 4.30pm
19 October 2025 | 11.00am to 4.30pm

How serious are the promises we make to one another, the vows we take, or the pledges made by our civic leaders? 

Public Trust asks participants to examine the value of their word. Participants declare a promise that is recorded in a drawing they can keep. They are asked to give their word in a way that’s consistent with their beliefs, such as swearing on a sacred text. That promise is published on a monumental marquee board, placed amongst promises made by politicians, scientists, economists, companies, and weather forecasters, all chosen daily from headline news.

Public Trust is a public realm artwork, a series of interactive performances that asks the public to vouch for their promises from a vast array of collaterals: taking oaths over sacred or civic texts, swearing over holy objects or materials, calling on a witness, making a pinky promise etc. As willing participants utter their promises, and then “give their word” in whatever way they see fit, their promises will go up on a large-scale marquee display board (anonymously) to be read by anyone. The board will also display other promissory statements culled from that day’s news - political promises, the weather report, scientific predictions, promises from popular culture figures, economic forecasts and more.

Audience notes

This is a public, outdoor, visual, participatory artwork in written and spoken English. BSL Interpreted on Saturday 18 October.
This artwork will be audio described.

Sensory Notes:

• Audience Interaction (optional)

• Outdoor Event

Language: English (written and spoken)

About the artist 

Paul Ramírez Jonas was born in 1965 in Pomona, California, and raised in Honduras. He earned a BA in studio art from Brown University (1987) and an MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1989).

Ramírez Jonas’ work ranges from large-scale public installation and monumental sculpture to intimate performance, video, and drawing, and traces the universal aspiration to an elusive perfect world. From driving west in pursuit of the sunset (Longer Day, 1997), to recreating failed flying machines (various projects, 1993–94) and transcribing the communications of the Apollo space mission (Men on the Moon, Tranquillity, 1990–), his practice is characterised by a bracing, albeit nostalgic, idealism rooted in a faith in human resilience. Sensitive to the processes of globalisation, he reveals its simultaneous tendencies towards interdependence and exclusion.

Lead Artist: Paul Ramírez Jonas
Produced and presented in association with Fierce
Originally commissioned by Now + There

Header image - Public Trust at Birmingham Festival, 2023 © Lensi Photography