From KT - The Lift - More Than I Bargained For

We had Robin Held and her partner, Alex, over for dinner the night before we left. Robin is the curator at the Frye Museum and I think she is electric and magnetic. Alex is an architect/visual artist and was fascinating to talk to. He is this year's Stranger's Genius in Visual Arts. Awesome - A Genius.

I was telling them about our day at the market and how intense it was. As I was talking, I was realizing that is WAS REALLY intense. Aaron, I thought you had a rough psychological time due to the rejection, fear, and being made into a person
you are NOT (scary, crazy, mean) by those you approached. Bianca, I felt you to be the calm presence of the day. It seemed you had the easiest time both inside and out - the most "success" and also the free-est time of just giving it a try and not feeling failures of many kinds. Although, I am sure it was difficult for you as well - I don't mean to imply that you weren't experiencing your own struggles.

My struggles became clearer as I was conveying the information to Robin, Alex and Kirby. It was certainly hard on a personal level. The rejection and fear associated with approaching a stranger. But the harder thing for me, I think, was more on an "art"level. I remember asking you both, "was this art?" sitting on the hill at the end of our trying. I am still asking that question - wondering how to approach this idea.

We seemed to come up with three possible directions:
1. just do it again - the same, simple way - maybe in a different location, maybe with more people, maybe exactly the same.
2. make a "dance" around it - people moving up and down the hill in various ways - slow, big, cool partnering ideas, etc. - and use that dance to both create context and make us "safer" from the energy that might come back our way.
3. make a "game" - around it - chalk on the floor, shirts that describe who we are, stickers or sayings to give out, stations and horses....a sort of "pin ball" experience for people to engage with and then get spit out at the top.

I am open to trying a bunch of things as research. Perhaps all of the above and even in various ways. But, honestly, option 2 and 3 both feel oddly like compromises to me. Ways to couch the experience in something more familiar - a way to make it safer and easier and even more "successful". And that word - "successful" - is the one I keep coming back to.

One of the things that seems so hard about the project is I DO want a CERTAIN kind of connection to be made - I want to control the experience - and I am, in my mind, thinking of this PARTICULAR kind of connection as a "successful" one. I want the person who we push up the hill to be sweetly transformed - to come out on the other side a changed person - thinking that humankind IS essentially good and they will look for the kindness of strangers now where ever they go. I am looking for an intimate exchange - a perfect moment.

It was painfully clear on Wednesday that by putting ourselves in an environment where we have almost NO control over the variables that it is simply not appropriate to think we can control the experience of the people we are coming into (or not) contact with. It is a flawed equation.

I am SURE we can improve our odds for the particular "success" by engaging in option 2 or 3. It will just make everything easier. People will be less afraid of us. Yet, I can't help but feel that by engaging in either option, I am moving away
from the HEART of the idea and into, simply, more familiar, "watered down" territory. Somehow it doesn't feel right. It
is as if the edge of the idea gets immediately less sharp, the second I think about surrounding the idea with a dog and pony show. And I start to wonder if it isn't the idea and/or outcome that needs to change, but rather the expectations around the experience
itself.

Although - I DO realize we have only tried the idea in one particular way for one hour - hardly enough data to know anything for sure. I DO think it is a good idea to try a few different things in a few different locations. I don't want to shut the research down.

Robin, Alex and Kirby thought (think) it is a dynamic project. Hearing this, of course, helps me. But they were the most interested in the variables of the experience - the secret nature of it - the "subversiveness" of the art imbedded into a rather strange one on one interaction.

Robin spoke of this Chinese artist and a project that he thought of as a "catalyst" project. He took 1001 Chinese people to a very small town in Germany for an art festival / show they had there every year (he was one of the invited artists to participate). There were only something like 1,500 people in the town to begin with. The 1001 Chinese people lived there for
100 days. They just imbedded themselves in this community. Basically, they DOUBLED the population of the town. And they weren't just a little different from the townspeople. They were TOTALLY different. They looked different, ate different food, spoke a totally different language, had a totally different culture and social code. This was the art for this man. Not the OUTCOME - he had no idea what the outcome would be. How could he? I mean, I guess he knew, very simply, he was going to shake things up a bit, but that was the extent of his outcome knowledge. He set the catalyst in play as his art and let the
outcome decide itself.

In so many ways, this kind of description feels closer to our project than the "set up a big container for it to live in and for the outcome to be more pointed" option. Perhaps it is a project about the attempt. Perhaps the art of it is what happens later - the conversations we have, the conversations (or not) that the people we connected with (or didn't) have. Maybe the project lies in us writing about our experiences after we have them - I am not sure.

I agree we are in need of some kind of "container" for the art part to manifest. But as of today, I wonder if that container lies in some kind of aftermath.