show someone how you feel about something

Posted July 10th, 2007 by Zoe Cohen

Hi everyone,
I'm writing with some information on an event I am coordinating as part of the alt.space festival. I met some of you on Sunday, and a few of you expressed interest/availability in working on this.

It's called "show someone how you feel about something" and at the most basic level, it is about offering people a possibility of interacting/being/communicating differently than is the norm in public and civic space.
More specifically, it is a public, participatory drawing project. We as facilitators will have clipboards, paper, drawing materials, envelopes, postage, and a list of names and addresses of public/elected officials at the city/state/region/national/gloabl levels.
Participants who we attract by approaching directly on the street, will make a drawing to show someone how they feel about something. They are encouraged to communicate mainly through the image, and to use text only for a title or short "caption" for the image.
We might photo-document the drawing after it is done, before the participant puts it in an envelope. We will collect envelopes to mail ourselves, to ensure they make it to the mailbox.

Details:

We will meet at Noon at the fountain in the center of Rittenhouse Square, Center City Philadelphia on the following days, and do the project for about an hour.

july:
thursday 19
monday 23
tuesday 24
monday 30
tuesday 31

- if you can, bring:
- digital camera/video camera
- drawing/writing implements
- business-sized white envelopes to donate to the project
- stamps to donate to the project

also: i could really use some volunteers to help collect addresses of elected/public officials for the city, state, region, country, world.
if you have some time to do some web research and email me with a few names and addresses of people who you think folks would want to mail a drawing to, that would be great! thank you in advance!

i will do a VERY brief "training" before we begin each session.

things to keep in mind:
people will tend to ignore you and/or say " i can't draw" etc.
be prepared to be cheerfully insistent, but don't dog people.
ways to approach people:
want to try something new? would you like to show someone how you feel about something? have you made your drawing today?
avoid easily avoided questions: do you have a minute, can i ask you something, etc
write a list for yourself of things you can imagine to say to someone who thinks they can't draw!
( well, can you hold a pencil?, no art degree required. you won't be graded on this. i can't draw either. it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. i'll bet you can too draw! etc)

Please do reply and let me know which day(s) you plan to come, or if you are not available and would prefer to not get email about this project.
Looking forward to exploring space and communication with you,
Zoe.

I can be there on the 19th,

On July 12th, 2007 Scott Rigby says:

I can be there on the 19th, 23rd & 24th. Maybe the later days as well... but these are the only events that will happen before the 24-hr-long conference between Philly & London on July 28-29th. So would be good I think to focus energy on these days anyway, concentrate some attention on documentation, etc

By the way, does anyone have ideas about specific readings that could contextualize these events? Our thought from the last meeting was that each event could begin with a group reading of some text... (not to limit the experience, but a point of common ground, from which we can spiral out into other teritory).

Personally I'd like the reading to be on the shorter side, since we'll only be in the park for an hour per day–all together anyway. Maybe some of us could meet earlier and do the reading ahead of time–and we can also post he reading online, so those who know they won't be there early to read in person can read it in advance themselves, and only show up for the drawing part.

What do you think about readings, schedules, etc?