The Setting is an open participatory situation where visitors contribute to a collective writing action. A set of laptops are located within an installation, connected to projectors, allowing visitors to write, to witness others’ writings, to read what is happening. The writing is freely directed by curiosity, questioning, fictions and speculations aimed at stimulating thoughts on the contemporary condition of “public intimacy” – common strangers, overhearing others, sharing here and there. It is imagined that a series of silent collaborations will unfold within the writing gesture, as one visitor writes while also witnessing what others are writing; one may read what others write and may feel inspired to counter, to balance, to interject; or writing might act as a form of diary, capturing the moment and giving voice to the present. The Setting may become a durational space, an open source for materializing a temporary meeting and multiplying narratives around commonality, publicness, artistic strategies, global culture, intimacy.
January 28 – 30th, 2011