Today Is My Second Meeting With Ushibuka City Hall Employees To Discuss Omoidemari, A Temporary Public

Today is my second meeting with Ushibuka city hall employees to discuss Omoidemari, a temporary public art project I've been working on for the past year and hope to launch for the month of April to coincide with the Ushibuka Haiya Festival. I'm both nervous and excited, and I can't help feel at a disadvantage discussing complicated matters in a second language. Still, they seem excited. Hopefully we can make this happen together.  More information on the project here.

Last month, thinking about my own public art practice, I toyed with the idea of inserting English into the lives of my students like I've done with art. I wanted English to be something they bumped into around their homes, rather than just a subject that existed purely within the school building. From those thoughts, I came up with a fairly conventional scavenger hunt. Through English clues posted in the school, students search for 14 clues spread out over Kawaura (an area of 119 square km/46 square miles). We're in the third week of the hunt, and just more than half of the clues have been found.

For prizes, I made mix CDs. To emphasize the international nature of English, I chose musicians I liked from a variety of countries, including some where English is not the native language. In Japanese I explained the main phrase or general meaning of each song. Also, it turned out that three of the singers on the mix (Janis Ian and Tegan and Sara Quin) are queer and two more are rumored to be (Elly Jackson of La Roux, and Janelle Monae), so I made sure to include a note about that as well.

Font: 806 Typography by Leonard Posavec (a cool, Croatian teen)

The fifth piece in a new photo series I’m doing on group identity. 

More info at the project site.

The first piece in a new photo series I'm doing on group identity. Each person photographed was asked "What groups do you feel you strongly identify with?" I have a bunch of shots saved up from US and Japan, so I can't wait to share them in the coming weeks. More info at the project site.

The second piece in a new photo series I’m doing on group identity.  More info at the project site.

The fourth piece in a new photo series I’m doing on group identity.  More info at the project site.