SCRIPT: Place and Borrow

This work relies on improvisation and the willingness and ability to ad lib while interacting with an audience. The performer is free to develop their own script following the intentions of the work outlined here.

The Script below was developed with imput by G. Louise Cooper for the first performance and is intended as a guide for future performances.

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Enter, Start metronome.
Set up workstation: arrange objects, turn on lamp, camera, projector.

Teller: Next?

Remember ancient ruins. The landscapes of edges. Excerpts of progress.

(Holding a piece of sculpted Bismuth) I have this object, for example, it is metal, its structure is crystalline, but these crystals have no center. The edges are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in, as if someone had removed the interior section of each one.
In fact, the "removed" sections never filled in because the crystal was growing so rapidly that there was not enough time (or material) to fill in the gaps. What you see as here center is actually a layering of smaller and smaller edges around gaps.  

(Turn on Car, SEND Bismuth, while saying)
You see, our interest is in continuing a process of transaction with a different currency.
Birthing a new system of value, giving rise to a more human basis of trade.

(Holding a piece of sculpted PLA)
I have this object, it is bio-degradable plastic made from sugar cane, its structure is also crystalline. These crystals have no center either. The edges are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in, as if they had been removed. In fact, the "removed" sections never filled in, because the equation used to generate this form didn't generate a center. The mathematics was a repetition of a hollow form at different scales. The center was a question the mathematics couldn't answer.

(SEND Plastic in car, while saying)
Instead of shame, spend this currency into existence.

(Holding a piece of sculpted Lead)
I have this object, lead. It terms of metal, it is soft, malleable. Freshly cut, solid lead has a bluish-white color that soon tarnishes to a dull gray when exposed to air. If ingested, lead and its compounds are poisonous to animals and humans. Lead poisoning has been documented since ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient China. Part of its toxicity results in its ability to mimic other metals in the body’s biological processes. Processes in which it cannot fulfill its stolen role.  

(SEND Lead in car, while saying)
One becomes another?

(Holding sculpted paper)
I have this object, paper, string, ink. Paper is a versatile material with many uses, writing, printing, cleaning. Historically it has enabled the mass exchange of information, contributed to significant cultural shifts.
This object here was hand-sewn into a tight loop. It has multiple textures, rough and grainy, this part smooth, waxy.
It is the remnant of a project, an idea.

(SEND Paper in car, while saying)

 

(CONCLUSION, while looking at [imaginary] wall clock)

It’s 5 o’clock, the bank is closed.

(Fade to black)

 

 

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO KEEP IN MIND….

+Art restores a center

+The push and pull between micro and macro in the performance, aims to engage the audience in the process of gradually orienting themselves to a state where the connection between their individual experience and a larger cultural, social and historical context is more palpable.

+ Art has the capacity to contribute to the restoration of the city and its inhabitants soul / art can rebuild taking into account the complexity of the city/human soul otherwise emptied by a process of financialized homogenization driven by a desire for surplus "free" money and profit.

+The aesthetic experience is the essence of the currency that is exchanged within this piece in contrast to the hollowness that results from the trading/exchanges are based on immediate financial gain that left the city, the bank building, gutted.

+Discussion of remnants: The objects are all remnants of art making - emphasizing the value of process over end result - but process that engages humans as thinking, feeling beings (a humanized/humanizing 'system'), as opposed to the parallel remnants of the city - the burned out, empty squares of the city, the ruins, artifacts of a system that didn't account for the people as people (as thinking, feeling, complex beings)

+POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE HOLLOWNESS: their hollowness symbolize the personal, experiential space created by art.
+Substituted greedy, selfish profiteering for deeper human experiences, including the aesthetic experience.
+Build from the essences of things, a real understanding of what these things are; constructive point of view
+Understanding self through this transaction