The following statements are all from my point of view, and are in no way endorsed by his highness, Erik Fabian.
For the evening of our artist conversation, Erik and I wanted to push the hermetic boundaries of Elsewhere out, to make it as much as it could be, a place of the people. To this end, we replicated certain elements of Elsewhere's interior and installed them on Elsewhere's facade. We selected objects to replicate that would also be reminiscent of a grand opening, that special time in a space's life where everyone is welcome and encouraged to take part in its reception into the world.
Erik and I asked Elsewhere's guests to line-up outside the door to 608 S Elm St, where we greeted each person one-by-one, learning a little bit about them and sharing a little bit about ourselves. After we got to know each other (somewhat) we brought our guests inside to a receiving line where we introduced them to each of the guests inside. Once they had been introduced, they joined the end of the line, where they became part of the receiving line, ready to meet the next guest we introduced.
One of me and Erik's goals for the evening was to help to make Elsewhere a more permissive environment to explore for the general public. While people are always welcome to come in and play, most folks are often inhibited by - well I don't know what, but it is something we all share whatever it is and Erik and I wanted to lessen that sense of taboo.
While our guests (and Elsewherian natives) waited in the receiving line, they were given the task of telling each other stories. The story was to be about some sort of childhood misconception that they had. (Such as: I thought that if you ate strawberries your lips would be red forever) They were told to listen to each other's stories carefully, because once they had related their stories to one another, they were to venture out into Elsewhere and as a team, find one object that in someway could represent the stories shared. In this portion of the evening, there were many opportunities for stories told and retold. Connections abounded. In this way, our evening provided an opportunity for community building.
After the teams had searched high and low, they returned to 608 and laid their objects in a line on the floor. As a group we discussed the different objects in terms of their context - why they had been chosen - their physical shape, and their aesthetic qualities. These things were discussed with the aim of assembling the disparate objects into a totem. Erik and I chose the symbolic form of the totem, because we thought that that idea, over "assemblage" or some other term, was connected to the idea of human history, as well as being an object that was easy to visualize.
Another goal of ours was touched upon here since we intended for Elsewhere to become a place of production for its guests, a place where anyone can make something and feel ownership.
Once our process of creation was ostensibly over with, we took one lap around it to make sure we were all happy with it's final aesthetic and symbolic appearance.
It was also very important to us that what the group of Elsewherians and Elsewherian visitors made that night was as important as what we did within Elsewhere on a regular basis. We seized the opportunity of the front window installation space being empty and installed our totem there. Erik instructed the team to work together in this delicate process...
