This video is pretty bare bones, when I made it I had just arrived at Elsewhere, and had little to say...still in the sponge-stage of the whole thing. I think it is nice because it gives at least the beginnings of a shape to the vast vessel that is Elsewhere.
(Apologies for the bouncy bouncy nature of the thing - my camera already makes very compressed videos, and youtube has just scrambled the whole thing further...maybe one day I will set things straight, but until then, people susceptible to seizures should probably not watch this video.)
While at Elsewhere, residents, interns, etc are encouraged to privatize a desk, as well as find other ways to make the very dynamic and collective treasure trove that is Elsewhere their own. Many people do this by wearing clothes from Elsewhere during their stay. This is one way, among many others, we become Elsewherians.
I, however, have a bad relationship with musty clothes, and did not partake in this activity.
I did however read a great deal.
For me this was possibly more intense than simply dwelling in the garments of Elsewhere. I am a reader, and always have been. I will read anything. I consume words like people consume TV. While reading a book, the language and story haunts my brain, even while the book is put away for the day.
It is like seeing the world through a haze, everything is colored by what I am reading.
First I read Ru Paul's Autobiography, which was actually Bing's and not Elsewhere's, but was gifted to me by Carolyn on my first day. Bing eventually came and took it back, but you can imagine that while I had it, my world was brightly colored indeed.
Next I read Peter Pan, which I found on my desk one day shortly after I blogged about thinking that Elsewhere might be like Neverland. In that same blog post I also wrote about Elsewhere perhaps being like Lord of the Flies (in general I think I was feeling the social anarchy of the place) and around the time I was still reading Peter Pan, I found Lord of the Flies in the library (it was actually part of Cameron and Erin's small wall of books that they had built in front of the book shelf for the night of their artist conversation (really Pritika's) and figured that they wouldn't miss one book (though maybe, looking back, it had special significance being where it was and I am in fact a terrible desecrater of art!).
Later, while helping Pritika put the library together, I came across Bridge to Terebithia, which for nostalgic reasons, as well as the idea of staying with kid's books, I put aside to read later. Unfort, putting something aside in Elsewhere can be a dangerous thing, since "aside" can quickly be appropriated as a beach or wall or anything really. And so, I let it go. But then the day I finished Lord of the Flies, I decided to poke around and see if
I could find BtT or at least another book, and very quickly re-found it, and at the same time found a collection of Dashiell Hammet's novels, which became next in line for my consumption. My children's book theme still felt intact since Hammet was writing in a very particular era of American history, that to me, speaks intensely of boyhood, which I also realized was a strong theme in all I had read at Elsewhere.
And so, if you can, imagine the eyes that I was looking through at Elsewhere: Ru Paul, Peter Pan/Captain Hook, Ralph (another boy leader of boys), Jess (a boy learning to open his eyes), and finally the hard-boiled detectives of Hammet.
At Elsewhere, one might happen to page through the exciting 10-volume set of encyclopedias entitled "Our Wonder World." The storytelling is naturalistic and demonstrates that though we would like to believe that the knowledge presented in encyclopedias and the like is objective, it cannot help but be subjective. An interesting piece of this is that it is not the content really that is "wrong" or misrepresented, but the context - the words that proceed or follow the facts, the headings that they fall under, the organization of the subjects, or the presumption that it can be presented at all. Our Wonder World is fantastic for this reason, and represents an era of knowledge - where art and science and social studies mingled by necessity - that has sadly faded into the past.
DEAR READER - If you do anything while at Elsewhere, please please, take some time to leaf through the pages of this extraordinary set of books.
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.
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.
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.
