PHOTO: 鄧婷文 Teng Ting Wen
WE HOPE THIS PROJECT PROVIDES A MEETING PLACE FOR US
(US, IN THE ALL OF US SENSE) TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER, AND OURSELVES, BETTER.
Accompanying each suitcase is a book containing a series of questions and a place for participants to write their responses. They are questions that celebrate what make us commonly human and individually unique. They are questions that ask: What does it mean to be alive together, in this place, at this time?
Inside each suitcase is a miniature sculpture installation inspired by the questions - a landscape, viewed through tiny, peepshow style windows. Viewers will shine a light down into the shadowy world inside each suitcase while turning gears and wheels to interact with the images.
Each participant’s response will be a specific piece of information, representing a specific life, like a single scrap of fabric. As responses accumulate, they will form the accompanying text to the visual component. When read together, the responses will become a collage of particulars, a poem of lives, a quilt made up of many scraps of fabric, where patterns or motifs may emerge…or not.
The images will become the theatrical scenery for the staging of these hodgepodge scripts, these many-authored poems.
The questions have been translated into six major world languages, based on numbers of global speakers. Participants are encouraged to write their responses in as many languages as they speak.
This website is a way for past participants to keep track of the project and the journey of the suitcases.
We don’t know what the result of this project will be.
Will people take the time and care to interact with the project?
Will they pass these suitcases on to other people?
Will they get lost? Stolen? Broken?
Or will they travel the world for years, being passed from person to person, accumulating the residue of the lives through which they have passed.
We do know that, at best, the result will be an incomplete, messy, confusing medley of responses. Just as we are an incomplete, messy, confusing medley of reactions to being alive.
This project is unique in that it relies on the communication and teamwork of strangers and is an exercise in our ability as world citizens to work together to share beauty.
CONTACT
[email protected]
THIS PROJECT WAS CREATED BY
GABRIEL HARRELL www.theruralacademytheater.com and EMMA BRIERLEY www.temporarycommons.com
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
'DREAM COMMUNITY' - NEW TAIPEI CITY, TAIWAN. A PLACE WHERE ARTISTS DEVELOP THEIR PRACTICE TO PRODUCE WORKS THAT HAVE SCULPTURAL, PERFORMATIVE, GRAPHIC AND NEW MEDIA BASED OUTCOMES.
WWW.DREAMCOMMUNITY.TW
AND THE INDUSTRIOUS TRANSLATORS
Ali Boyce / Amy Tsai / Andrea Cohen / Ania Aizman / David Lauer / David Lamoso / Emily Nicholl / Felipe Bustos Sierra / Mark Stevens / Reem Behzad / Shawna Lucey / Teresa Camou Guerrero / Zein El-Amine
GABRIEL HARRELL www.theruralacademytheater.com and EMMA BRIERLEY www.temporarycommons.com
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
'DREAM COMMUNITY' - NEW TAIPEI CITY, TAIWAN. A PLACE WHERE ARTISTS DEVELOP THEIR PRACTICE TO PRODUCE WORKS THAT HAVE SCULPTURAL, PERFORMATIVE, GRAPHIC AND NEW MEDIA BASED OUTCOMES.
WWW.DREAMCOMMUNITY.TW
AND THE INDUSTRIOUS TRANSLATORS
Ali Boyce / Amy Tsai / Andrea Cohen / Ania Aizman / David Lauer / David Lamoso / Emily Nicholl / Felipe Bustos Sierra / Mark Stevens / Reem Behzad / Shawna Lucey / Teresa Camou Guerrero / Zein El-Amine