Erik’s Neighborhood

Erik and I colloborated on this initial (beta) release of the Elsewhere Visitor Center.

Visitor Center Map

PLANNING MEETING NOTES:

Visitor Services (BETA):
    •    Installation process/product space
    •    Games: consist of objects and (dynamic card box)
        ⁃    Local - games that happen at desk (associative writing, ex corpse stories, etch-sketch
        ⁃    Elsewhere - games that take you around space: binoculars, take these five/return five more, frames
    •    Communication
        ⁃    Mailing list sign-up
        ⁃    Calendar of events
        ⁃    Cards, brochures, fliers - web info in card format (info on mailing list form)
        ⁃    Audio Tour, maps, info about installations
        ⁃    **Archive: "About elsewhere" materials**
        ⁃    Sign-in/Reflection/questions book
    •    Tools and Resources
        ⁃    What is installation?
        ⁃    Images
        ⁃    Strategies
        ⁃    Books
    •    Camera (pictures for sale - $2/poloroid if you create an installation, OR rent digital?)
    •    Buttons for sale?
    •    Aesthetics - glass, clean, lights, grand, organization system, "unit" feeling, communication strategies

PRIORITIES LIST

    1.    PHOTOGRAPH HUTCH
    2.    Pile of current elsewhere visitor stuff (?)
    3.    Mailing List (1hr)
    4.    Installation (3hrs)
    5.    Organize set-up of visitor center (2hr)
    6.    Two games of our own (2hr)

----
Post-Unveiling Feedback with George and Steph

BEST

- Parts that send you into the space (limited as a result of GE opening)
- Game that involved switching out objects

QUESTION

- Map of center? Work or not work?
   Response - Needs to be fleshed out more, deeper, more developed, self-sustaining
- Where does archival material live?
- Photos - post S/G arrival
- How do visitors encounter it? Is it accessible as is?
    - Is it something for their second return? Is it for returning visitors?
    - Are they encouraged to visit it?
    - Are there elements in the space that send someone back to it?
    - What is it used for, how are people directed to it?
    - Is there a mirror?
    - What are the public spaces of elsewhere? Map with context clues.
    - How are permissions provided (wrt above)

MUSEUM DISPLAY - is a historical display

STORE COUNTER - Where materials and information is distributed, human to human
Buttons, promotional information, fliers, etc

VISITOR CENTER - pedagogical, clear
 A way to communicate Elsewhere via process and organization
    - Education is clear
    - Refer to specific pieces in space
    - About Elsewhere, deeper level (articles)
    - Work about the work
    - Work by current artists
    - (i say - further opps to engage, such as promotional materials, calendar, web address, under guise of "learn more")

IDEAS
    - Game of unit as a whole (overarching theme) across whole unit
    - (((aside - in kitchen, etc are we on display?)))
    - Find and retrieve - not necessary getting, but recording. Games that are actually interesting for people.
    - Using objects to speak "Open me" "Look here!" etc
    - What I saw log - visitors can point each other to something that they saw in space -
        using words, maps and images...
    - mini-collections org'd by themed
    - shopping

Dear Stephanie Pereira,

First the facts: You have animated a number of books taken from the library of Elsewhere and decided to project this animation against an exterior window of the building. You are taking aspects in the interior and placing them exterior to introduce an aspect of Elsewhere to the public. We have discussed Elsewhere and its accessibility during our time here.

We came to work at Elsewhere to learn more about collaborating with each other. Your video is inspired by this last month of collaboration, presented in five untitled acts. You take our personal and offer it publicly as well.

Next, what I learned about you and your work: Your video work is decorative and funny like many things you make. You are most comfortable as a maker when you can envision a look and then actualize it. You want to do things together.

Next, what I learned about my work and myself: I like to get the feel of a process and let that displace me. I want some quiet time to figure out where I am and to have ownership of that place.

Finally, what I learned about our work and collaborative relationship: Our work meshes in layers rather than in mixtures, like the flags at the end of your video, or this letter on this window; we are lasagna not sauce. We like to talk to each other about thoughts but not about action. We see time very differently, like most things.

Love,
Erik Fabian

Greensboro, NC @ Elsewhere
August 31, 2007

This video is pretty bare bones, when I made it I had just arrived at Elsewhere, and had little to say...still in the sponge-stage of the whole thing. I think it is nice because it gives at least the beginnings of a shape to the vast vessel that is Elsewhere.

(Apologies for the bouncy bouncy nature of the thing - my camera already makes very compressed videos, and youtube has just scrambled the whole thing further...maybe one day I will set things straight, but until then, people susceptible to seizures should probably not watch this video.)

The following statements are all from my point of view, and are in no way endorsed by his highness, Erik Fabian.

ErikSteph_bookTotem

For the evening of our artist conversation, Erik and I wanted to push the hermetic boundaries of Elsewhere out, to make it as much as it could be, a place of the people. To this end, we replicated certain elements of Elsewhere's interior and installed them on Elsewhere's facade. We selected objects to replicate that would also be reminiscent of a grand opening, that special time in a space's life where everyone is welcome and encouraged to take part in its reception into the world.

Facade

Storefront

Window

Erik and I asked Elsewhere's guests to line-up outside the door to 608 S Elm St, where we greeted each person one-by-one, learning a little bit about them and sharing a little bit about ourselves. After we got to know each other (somewhat) we brought our guests inside to a receiving line where we introduced them to each of the guests inside. Once they had been introduced, they joined the end of the line, where  they became part of the receiving line, ready to meet the next guest we introduced.

Outside

One of me and Erik's goals for the evening was to help to make Elsewhere a more permissive environment to explore for the general public. While people are always welcome to come in and play, most folks are often inhibited by - well I don't know what, but it is something we all share whatever it is and Erik and I wanted to lessen that sense of taboo.

While our guests (and Elsewherian natives) waited in the receiving line, they were given the task of telling each other stories. The story was to be about some sort of childhood misconception that they had. (Such as: I thought that if you ate strawberries your lips would be red forever) They were told to listen to each other's stories carefully, because once they had related their stories to one another, they were to venture out into Elsewhere and as a team, find one object that in someway could represent the stories shared. In this portion of the evening, there were many opportunities for stories told and retold. Connections abounded. In this way, our evening provided an opportunity for community building.

TheSearch_1

TheSearch_2

After the teams had searched high and low, they returned to 608 and laid their objects in a line on the floor. As a group we discussed the different objects in terms of their context - why they had been chosen - their physical shape, and their aesthetic qualities. These things were discussed with the aim of assembling the disparate objects into a totem. Erik and I chose the symbolic form of the totem, because we thought that that idea, over "assemblage" or some other term, was connected to the idea of human history, as well as being an object that was easy to visualize.

Another goal of ours was touched upon here since we intended for Elsewhere to become a place of production for its guests, a place where anyone can make something and feel ownership.

Assembly_1

Assembly_2

Assembly_3

Once our process of creation was ostensibly over with, we took one lap around it to make sure we were all happy with it's final aesthetic and symbolic appearance.

Review

It was also very important to us that what the group of Elsewherians and Elsewherian visitors made that night was as important as what we did within Elsewhere on a regular basis. We seized the opportunity of the front window installation space being empty and installed our totem there. Erik instructed the team to work together in this delicate process...

Installation_1

Installation_2

Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography

While at Elsewhere, residents, interns, etc are encouraged to privatize a desk, as well as find other ways to make the very dynamic and collective treasure trove that is Elsewhere their own. Many people do this by wearing clothes from Elsewhere during their stay. This is one way, among many others, we become Elsewherians.

I, however, have a bad relationship with musty clothes, and did not partake in this activity.

I did however read a great deal.

Peter Pan

For me this was possibly more intense than simply dwelling in the garments of Elsewhere. I am a reader, and always have been. I will read anything. I consume words like people consume TV. While reading a book, the language and story haunts my brain, even while the book is put away for the day.

It is like seeing the world through a haze, everything is colored by what I am reading.

First I read Ru Paul's Autobiography, which was actually Bing's and not Elsewhere's, but was gifted to me by Carolyn on my first day. Bing eventually came and took it back, but you can imagine that while I had it, my world was brightly colored indeed.

Lord of the flies;: A novel (A Putnam Capricorn book, Cap 14)

Next I read Peter Pan, which I found on my desk one day shortly after I blogged about thinking that Elsewhere might be like Neverland. In that same blog post I also wrote about Elsewhere perhaps being like Lord of the Flies (in general I think I was feeling the social anarchy of the place) and around the time I was still reading Peter Pan, I found Lord of the Flies in the library (it was actually part of Cameron and Erin's small wall of books that they had built in front of the book shelf for the night of their artist conversation (really Pritika's) and figured that they wouldn't miss one book (though maybe, looking back, it had special significance being where it was and I am in fact a terrible desecrater of art!).

Bridge to Terabithia

Later, while helping Pritika put the library together, I came across Bridge to Terebithia, which for nostalgic reasons, as well as the idea of staying with kid's books, I put aside to read later. Unfort, putting something aside in Elsewhere can be a dangerous thing, since "aside" can quickly be appropriated as a beach or wall or anything really. And so, I let it go. But then the day I finished Lord of the Flies, I decided to poke around and see if I could find BtT or at least another book, and very quickly re-found it, and at the same time found a collection of Dashiell Hammet's novels, which became next in line for my consumption. My children's book theme still felt intact since Hammet was writing in a very particular era of American history, that to me, speaks intensely of boyhood, which I also realized was a strong theme in all I had read at Elsewhere.

Complete Novels: Red Harvest / The Dain Curse / The Maltese Falcon / The Glass Key / The Thin Man (L

Harper

At Elsewhere, one might happen to page through the exciting 10-volume set of encyclopedias entitled "Our Wonder World." The storytelling is naturalistic and demonstrates that though we would like to believe that the knowledge presented in encyclopedias and the like is objective, it cannot help but be subjective. An interesting piece of this is that it is not the content really that is "wrong" or misrepresented, but the context - the words that proceed or follow the facts, the headings that they fall under, the organization of the subjects, or the presumption that it can be presented at all. Our Wonder World is fantastic for this reason, and represents an era of knowledge - where art and science and social studies mingled by necessity - that has sadly faded into the past.

DEAR READER - If you do anything while at Elsewhere, please please, take some time to leaf through the pages of this extraordinary set of books.

Devil_Fish

Earth

Brain

OK, so I'm uploading my blog long after the fact. In retrospect i like the experience a whole lot more than i did at the time. Looking back on those 6 weeks i see a rare chance to play. Something that becomes somewhat of a luxury at times.

And at the time?

I arrived at Elsewhere towards the end of July, jet lagged and exhausted. What a crazy place! There is stuff EVERYWHERE. Toys, trinkets, beads. badges, clothes, books, records. You name it, it's here, coating the walls from top to bottom. At first glance it seems like pure chaos, but on further inspection i can see that almost every part of this place has been worked over by someone. Some artist, some sort of pattern, organization through out this madness.

It's hard not to feel overwhelmed. The collection has so much in the way of history. Each item with it's own story.
I have so many idea's. I have no idea's. Words cannot express...