Performance Actions
The first was a series of Performance Actions, born of a simple premise: if I wanted to know what missing was, why didn’t I just ask? Together with my collaborator, Amani Alsaied, I came up with a series of exchanges.
"Send a letter anywhere."
I made signs in English, Arabic, and eventually Hindi and Urdu. Those curious enough to stop and ask questions were met with one in return: "If you could send a letter to anyone in the world, who would you choose?" It wasn't hypothetical; In my bag I had stacks of envelopes and paper (and very nice pens). The deal was this: if they'd write the letter right then and there, I'd bring it (unopened and unread) to the post office and pay to send it. In return, they'd agree to speak to me for 5 minutes: who did they write to? Why? Who didn't they write to?
"Call Anyone, Anywhere"
Next I loaded up a phone with credit, and printed every country code I could find. 5 minutes of calling time in exchange for 5 minutes of conversation.
Eventually, I started letting people choose: call or write? How do you want to reach them? Right there or right now?
For each interview, I worked together with participants to draw up a contract, so that each shared and withheld on their own terms.
Across 23 interviews, we sent letters to Australia, to the UK, to Argentina, and to Bangladesh; we made phone calls to Romania, Doha, Zanzibar, and Ukraine; we reached out to siblings and friends, lovers and mothers, lost mentors and pets. We bought a lot of stamps.
The interviews broke down into three main sections:
Who did you write to /call? | What does missing feel like? | Can you tell me about yourself?
"Send a letter anywhere."
I made signs in English, Arabic, and eventually Hindi and Urdu. Those curious enough to stop and ask questions were met with one in return: "If you could send a letter to anyone in the world, who would you choose?" It wasn't hypothetical; In my bag I had stacks of envelopes and paper (and very nice pens). The deal was this: if they'd write the letter right then and there, I'd bring it (unopened and unread) to the post office and pay to send it. In return, they'd agree to speak to me for 5 minutes: who did they write to? Why? Who didn't they write to?
"Call Anyone, Anywhere"
Next I loaded up a phone with credit, and printed every country code I could find. 5 minutes of calling time in exchange for 5 minutes of conversation.
Eventually, I started letting people choose: call or write? How do you want to reach them? Right there or right now?
For each interview, I worked together with participants to draw up a contract, so that each shared and withheld on their own terms.
Across 23 interviews, we sent letters to Australia, to the UK, to Argentina, and to Bangladesh; we made phone calls to Romania, Doha, Zanzibar, and Ukraine; we reached out to siblings and friends, lovers and mothers, lost mentors and pets. We bought a lot of stamps.
The interviews broke down into three main sections:
Who did you write to /call? | What does missing feel like? | Can you tell me about yourself?
You can navigate through one question at a time, or move between questions by following the path of one person instead. If you meet someone you like, click their letter or call log, and you can find the complete transcript of their interview. Or you can jump around, getting lost between the people and their stories—that's what I did, and I can highly recommend it.
Discussion of "Performance Actions"
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