Organizers of each area in the Times Square Show tried to broker peace, but installation was an anarchic Darwinian process. Some artists’ pieces were replaced or overshadowed by other artists’ work. Sometimes the first artist reasserted their place, sometimes not. Unknown SVA students Kenny Scharf and Keith Haring showed up and added art work wherever they felt like it, as did graffiti masters Lee and Fab 5 Freddy. There was no final curator/arbiter to settle these disputes. It was creative arm-to-arm combat and the most assertive won.

For example Jody Culkin and I took responsibility for organizing the stairwells. As we were installing, a then-unknown David Hammons appeared. He’d heard from Joe Lewis that there was an art free-for-all brewing, and came to check it out. After introducing himself he headed back out into Times Square, returning quickly with a bag full of Night Train bottles, which he’d collected on the block. David then crushed the bottles and sprinkled shards of green glass down the whole staircase. When we objected to the glass carpet he’d just laid for us to work in, David swept the broken glass to one side of each step, giving us a little shrug and a smile as if to say “Deal with it, kids,” and left. His piece stayed among works on the stairs by Kiki Smith, Mike Glier, Fab 5 Freddy, Mike Bidlo, John Ahearn and others, some invited and some volunteers.

— Jane Dickson, A BOOK ABOUT COLAB (AND RELATED ACTIVITIES)