Now Streaming: Last Call – DemocracyICED

Today, Wednesday, October 15, artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese — LigoranoReese — will install a sculpture of the word "Democracy" carved in ice on the National Mall at 3rd Street NW between Madison and Jefferson Drives, SW. You can tune in for the live stream of the event on this page at 11am CT / 12pm ET. Watch below.

Last Call – DemocracyICED launches with a press conference featuring LigoranoReese alongside retired defense experts and spokespeople from faith-based communities who will talk about the impacts of militarization on our society. You can tune in for the live stream of the event here, two hours from now. Cultural, public health, education spokespeople have been invited to talk throughout the day. 

The sculpture, weighing over 3000 pounds and measuring 17 feet wide, will melt away and disappear during the day. This is the artists' fourth installation of this kind. First staged in 2006 and 2008, these works transform the abstract crisis of democracy into something visible and visceral: massive, solid, and seemingly permanent in the morning, then vanishing into memory by nightfall. DemocracyICED marks the third major artist-driven event of the UP IN ARMS campaign — a four-year effort to expose the dangers of militarizing U.S. society and to transform runaway defense spending into a kitchen-table issue ahead of the 2026 and 2028 elections. 

Learn more about LigoranoReese's practice by visiting their artist profile, which includes videos spanning the past three decades and the history of their ice sculptures in The State of Things (2006), A Thousand Cuts (2011), and Truth Be Told (2019).