PURE BLISS & JOY — GO® will be an interactive installation of a fictitious travel agency selling packages to various imaginary utopian destinations. The installation will be constructed as a trade show booth. The main section of the booth will include a reception desk attended by two greeters dressed in company uniforms (performers during special events and mannequins during regular gallery hours); a company promotional video playing on a loop on a monitor will be installed on the booth’s back panel; shelves displaying sample souvenirs such as cups, toothbrushes and key chains with company logo; and literature stands containing catalogues and brochures available for visitors viewing. The small, enclosed space to the left of the reception desk will serve as the hospitality area, where experts will provide guidance and assist visitors in choosing their utopian destinations, generating an unreadable printed image of those destinations using a custom design App on an IPad. The hospitality area will be furnished with high tables and barista stools and decorated with a large 9’ x 12’ company poster. On the wall facing the street another 15’ x 16’ company advertisement poster will be on display, inviting passers-by to visit the company’s booth inside. Reception desk, back panel, and two large posters will feature graphics of travelers performing various activities while visiting utopian places. Those images will be a direct reference to Kibbutz movement advertisement, Kibbutzim Rosh Hashana cards, as well as Jehovah Witness images of Heaven On Earth. Participants in the photo shoots for those graphics will be asked to wear conservative cloths and assume positions and activities such as carrying fruit baskets, holding bouquets of flowers or wheat, planting trees, carrying hoes and shovels on their shoulders, dancing, hugging animals, playing flute, lounging on the grass etc. Participants will also mimic expressions of joy and euphoria common in Kibbutz and Heaven On Earth imagery. Those characters will be inserted onto various stock images of “perfect” sunny, green and blue landscapes. A research of Kibbutz Rosh Hashana cards shows a common trend where two thirds of the card’s compositions are blue and green, which might be an attempt to express notions of clean, pure and back-to-nature attitudes. Walls within the installation area will be painted sky blue, a reference to the Israeli national color Tekhelet. The entire installation area will be covered by a blue or gray carpet with an inlay of the company logo in the main installation area. In addition, if budget allows, company advertisement will be featured on AC Transit and BART.
PBJ — GO® is a continuation of my ongoing focus on creating work that consists of magical, hypothetical, and absurd scenarios in response to existing cultural structures, in this case the ongoing attempts to create a perfect society in a perfect environment, with an attempt to deconstruct those methods. Through these projects I aim to produce a, positive, creative, social experience that is also thought provoking for both participants and audience.
