Beatrice- Project Proposal
The focus of my project has shifted! I am now interested in doing something around my own neighbourhood, Williamsburg's South Side (Brooklyn.)
After the readings on psychogeography, I would like to create a project that deals with space and how it is remembered, perceived, re-imagined, and envisioned for the future. My neighborhood is undergoing a lot of change as gentrification expands from North Williamsburg to the spaces immediately around it. I, myself, am part of that process and find my own position problematic. I would like to research the history of the space where I live: that history might be a mix of “historical facts” and interviews of more recent memories collected within the neighborhood. I envision the final project as an intervention onto the space itself. Here are two ideas that I have come up with:
1. SOUTH SIDE BALL
Constructing a ball that I can roll around my neighborhood and fill
with personal objects that the community in which I live in is planning
to throw out. I would like to develop some sort of fantastic narrative
for the ball and maybe create a little open market on the street in
which the objects are displayed and given away. I'm interested in
personal objects because of their possibilities for stories. I would
like to create a setting where people can come together to talk and look
at what's ended up in the ball- maybe take it back, maybe leave with
something else, maybe leave it there. The idea has developed out of my
own sense of removal from the neighborhood in which I live. I would
like to enter into dialogue with the community in a way that's not too
intrusive or forceful, playing on the visibility of my intrusion and possibly inspiring curiosity and more communication. SOUTH SIDE BALL would be about play...
2. SENSORIAL COLLECTOR
I was thinking of performing a semi autobiographic character who
empirically collects the smells and sounds of her neighborhood. This is
a more provocative project, where I look at how living in an "exotic"
neighborhood can become problematic. It would be a performance piece not
necessarily involved with my community, as much as with the neighboring
North Side, already completely gentrified North Side. Or maybe for
people in Manhattan: the Brooklyn explorer who brings back the authentic
smells and sounds (all sealed in containers with empirically accurate
descriptions of what they hold.) This is the more interesting starting
idea for the time being, but I am not sure about how to develop it, or
even if it is ethically sustainable.