What is your most prized possession? Is it the drool stained pillow you’ve been carrying around your whole life, the sweater you wear five times a week, or your grandmother’s wedding ring? Whatever the object, I want you to show it to me. The premise is this–you pick a time slot and together we’ll enjoy some snacks, discuss your object, and I will document it for the purposes of cataloguing.

My thoughts are two fold: To archive these tiny monuments in our lives through the form of catalogue, as well as to challenge the economic value we place upon sentimental objects. How do we determine the value of our objects? Through use? Through material value? Through its ‘lived’ experience within our personal/lived narrative?

The photo reproduction of your object will then be posted and placed for bidding on ebay with the value you have placed on the object set as the lowest bid. (Your object will not be sold, only the photograph). Participants will receive half of any earnings made from ebay sales and will receive a free copy of the catalogue created at the end of the project.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Please email me (Megan Lavelle) at objecttoobject@gmail.com and I will arrange a time and place to meet with you and your object.

**If you are an east coast resident, then we should schedule something over the month of December when I will be home for break.**

Lesson #1: Questions > Answers and Questions ≠ Answers.

Lesson #2: Language is a powerful thing. Wizardry is better.

Fieldwork:
As part of our Social Practice workshop we are required to do a few weeks of initial fieldwork in a field outside of ART. Other than that the parameters have been very loose so I decided to do a bit of research into the act of performance, specifically in performance requiring a spontaneity and reaction. So far I have talked to a few jazz performers, a few psychics and a few improv artists with the hope that the investigation will inform some (if not all) of my work this semester.

I just met with Peter Kim of Endgames Improv. It was a great conversation (will post soon) and we will hopefully work together on a few projects in the future. One thing that struck me were the amount of significant parallels there were between our processes. Maybe I’m meant to be an improv artist instead of an artist artist? Not sure what it all means quite yet, but there is potential for something awesome.

I also met with a psychic with a few appointments coming up (they are not cheap!). Still haven’t completely settled my feelings about the entire exchange. She hit on some really tough strings and I cried like a baby, but the commodity exchange was always at the back of my mind throughout the experience and therefore built a wall of doubt.

Update to come.

Readings:
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland
By: Robert O. Self

Participation
Edited by: Claire Bishop

Sculpture in the Expanded Field
By: Rosalind Krauss

Body as Language: Body Art and Like Stories.
By: Lea Vergine

The Ontology of Performance: Representation Without Reproduction
By: Peggy Phelan

Disassembling the Archive: Fiona Tan
By: Philip Monk

Archive Fever–Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art
By: Okwui Enwezor

My role remains omnipresent and objective with each as I move through the various rest stops and as each participant of How We Dwell mingles amongst my domestic carnage. Ultimately in my work, I attempt to reveal the intricate and oftentimes absurd nature of social interaction through the manipulation of exterior structures in order to shed light on the human condition. Within this dynamic I am artist, curator, and facilitator; a multi-faceted role where I am happy to probe, prod and ponder.

Curated con­ver­sa­tions. I am pair­ing peo­ple I have met at dif­fer­ent inter­sec­tions of my life who have never met, but who I believe should meet for var­i­ous rea­sons. They are brought to my liv­ing space and placed in a neu­tral envi­ron­ment with com­fort­able chairs, snacks and top­ics of dis­cus­sion specif­i­cally cho­sen for the pair. Each expe­ri­ence will be doc­u­mented with por­traits of each par­tic­i­pant along with a printed script of their conversation.