Here is the description from our materials: a temporary, autonomous project in a London park organized by MA Fine Art students at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Artists were invited to do projects that consider the context, address the public as audience, and respect the park. People did all sorts of things from performances, to installation, to events. We created a map for the event:
It is the 20th anniversary of my Dad's death so I wanted to do something around that, sort of a memorial/ritual of sorts that wasn't too sad. So I decided on....Bagels! A Sunday tradition in most Jewish homes, or just Long Island homes for that matter. Instead of just handing out bagels you had to give me a stone for a bagel and add it to a pile of stones.
Explanation:
Stones: Jews don't bring flowers to graves, they bring stones, which symbolize eternal life (they don't die like flowers and are "circular" like the life cycle. Also, grave stones were not always used, sometimes a pile of stones is/was used to mark graves.
Bagels: Trading a bagel for a stone is remembering but also celebrating, to me. True we eat when mourning (Jews eat on all occasions!) but it had more of a picnic feel than a mourning ritual. Also, Bagels remind me of Sundays growing up and they are round, like stones. Lastly, I wanted something to be ingested during it. I have been reading some psychoanalytic theory that prompted this idea. Basically it is said that a person in mourning suffering from 'object' loss can suffer from "melancholic cannibalism" in which the person has fantasies of eating the object (object = other) that was lost because it is better to destroy, digest, eat, than lose the person. A bit dark, I know, but I bet you're not surprised.
Newspaper: My Dad read the newspaper on Sundays and it is also a favorite thing of mine to do: sit around on Sunday and read the paper and chat about it. I couldn't get a New YorK Times in paper form on a Sunday (apparently you can get it on Mondays, naturally) so the observer had to do (thanks Rebecka).
Rebecka making a face due to something she read:
Since it was my first time doing something like this I think I was a little shy about it. I didn't really want to include strangers, which was my original thought. Lots of people passed by, dogs tried to eat the bagels and take the stones, even a kid tried to play with the stones and Rebecka accidentally gasped at him. HIlarious. Also, it was cold out and not picnic weather, as you can see from the dark pictures. In my mind the rocks were bigger and the food spread was more elaborate but in reality it was a little make shift. It worked out nicely, my friends were there and then we went for an alcoholic ginger beer and baked camembert. So overall a good day.
Hampstead Heath, my new favorite place in London:
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