I WANT TO TELL YOU...

Why a wedding ceremony?

'Marriage is a wonderful journey, a mysterious union founded on the love and trust between two people. Preserve the rich and meaningful experiences that make your relationship unique, for this is a story worth remembering.' Anonymous.

Wedding stories are central to much fictional narrative, on the screen and on the page. They are frequently used as key plot devices for escalating dramatic tension, for instance, and at other times play more subtle roles. One of Paul Durcan's poetry collections is prefaced with a quote from the Talmud: ' The world is a wedding'. This takes to its limit the metaphorical value of the wedding in global culture, and how we might see it as a vehicle for bringing together all kinds of disparate elements. I have chosen weddings as frame of my project essentially because they occupy a significant cultural and personal meaning for many people. They sit squarely between two other signal preoccupations of life and art - birth and death.
However, my project is NOT about marriage, at least not in the definition people usually give to this term.
My project is about interactive design, interaction with people, how to involve the public in your piece of work, how to make him the main actor, and even the creator of your design.
I married the public as the Queen Elisabeth married the English nation. It was a symbolic union, an exchange between ME and YOU: I asked YOU to entertain ME by telling me a story, and in exchange I was entertaining you by way of a wedding ceremony where you were given a ring, a kiss, a photograph and a certificate.
By writing the word 'YOU' in capitals, I want to refer to the public, the audience, the readers of my blog, the passers-by that I married, this second entity that I entered into dialogue with.
A marriage is a contract between 2 entities. If one of them is missing, there is no marriage.
I needed YOU and YOU needed ME, for the interaction to happen. BACK TO CONTENT

Why telling a story and making people write one?

The novelist, semiotician and philosopher, Umberto Eco, in his essay, On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1, concludes that 'no tangible map could represent the whole physical truth of a place.' If no one could actually live beneath a perfect, physical 1:1 map of their own existence, perhaps they could and already do live within an allusive and imperfect one; a changing map that is constructed from fragments of image and word.
In the same way, wedding narratives exist as a bundle of anecdotes, poems, songs, memories, souvenirs, photographs, stories and movies. They comprise a collective story to which millions of people contribute, as you did do on that 9th of October by participating in my story and writing your own one.
It is as if we have altogether created the great, suspended map of 'the wedding story' by synthesizing various references to it from a multiplicity of lesser stories. A grand wedding-narrative stands as the template to which each minor story refers. Every new story about weddings becomes part of the whole body of wedding material itself; reflecting and imbedding in and enlarging the greater narrative.
What is more, today, digital technologies and the net have this capacity to create super fictions from which there appears to be no avenue of escape. That's why I created an online person on a blog, in order to become a virtual storyteller entertaining the reader, while always trying to avoid the 'Life as a blog' effect, that is to say, the risk to be cut from reality thanks to this virtual life.
So with both my blog and my wedding performance I introduced YOU into a true virtual world, asking for your active participation in it.

But some people said to me: 'You are not the first person to have the idea to collect people's stories. A lot of websites already ask people to exhibit their Love or Wedding stories on the net, and even some newspapers like The Sun have a special column dedicated to unknown people's stories: 'Have you got a story for The Sun? Many of our best stories come from our vast army of readers. We always protect our sources - and if the story is a major exclusive there may be a fee. So if you have a hot tip email us right now.' The Sun.
Sure. But I wanted to start my own collection of stories. What is more, I didn't do it for money, contrary to all these tabloids that exhibit your life in their papers just for people to buy and read them, and all these Websites that only aim at inciting the curious voyeur to become exhibitionist in his turn, and to create his own Wedding Log using their lucrative services. They both give the impression to care about what you say, BUT THEY DON'T! They just do it for money.
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How do you invite participation in your story telling?

'As audiences become more particular and demanding, storytellers have to become more innovative in sustaining audiences attention.' Dino J Gallina, a blogger.
There are different means to tell a story, and different kind of storytellers, each of them more or less successfully inviting the participation of the public in their story.

- Virtual Reality is one of these means where the technology has not yet been able to hide itself. The result of this exposure is that participants are reminded about the reality outside of the stories reality, which leads to a disappointing storytelling experience. Helmets, gloves, restricted space all act as these reminders. For these reasons Virtual Reality has not yet been widely successful.

- Interactive theatre is explored as another type of interactive storytelling. In its simplest form, we can see street performers who encourage interaction by recruiting 'passer-byres' who otherwise may or may not be willing to participate. They do this by heckling or by literally inviting these bystanders to get involved.
Then we have Mystery Theatre, another way of interactive storytelling, yet the audience has little influence on the outcome. Here actors will usually hangout in the audience before the show, unidentified as performers, these actors will find out key information about the audience and the will modify the program in light of this information. This is how the audience, in some ways, participates in the show. But it is still more about the show and the performers than the audience. A good example of interactive theatre is the work of the German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch who always likes to create surreal stagings. At the beginning of one of them, the performers were part of the audience, offering spectators glasses of wine.

- Jeff Worth and a troop of improve actors attempt to accomplish interactive stories in a different way. Jeff and his troop will, in effect allow the participant to guide the story, by responding to his decisions, no matter where that participant may lead the story. Jeff explains that the way he and his troop encourage this participation is by 'positively reinforcing and affirming the participants' decision, and by allowing the audience the time to make these decisions without forcing them. The key, says Worth, is 'allowing the audience the opportunity to willingly participate'. He has found that inviting the participant may be done through body language, where the participant meets you halfway, or through phrases and words that cause reactions.
This type of interactive media is one of the most effective ways of encouraging active participation rather than the passive participation that is experienced in movies and dinner theatre.

- Another attempt that was made at interactive story was a premise that was barrowed from the feature film The Game directed by David Fincher. In this film a wealthy financier Nicholas Van Orton gets a birthday present from his brother Conrad: a live-action game where actors play roles in his life. In the movie Van Orton is unaware of that this game is being played and almost goes crazy as a result of what seems to be a cruel trick.
With each of these attempts at participatory storytelling certain rules to success seem to be consistent. One of these rules is the participants willingness to play, the invitation of the participant from the author, and ultimately a relatable character and emotional story. These things along with concealing the manipulation or technology involved in delivering the story can result in successful audience participation in storytelling.

As for me, involving the audience in my story was one of my biggest challenges and fears, and until the wedding day, I wasn't quite sure how I would do it. It really depended on your response to this project, and I had to improvise according to it. So the biggest part of my performance was pure improvisation. I didn't build any play, I didn't practice any show like these automatons in Covent Garden. It was YOU who made this performance live and who decided how I should respond to the decisions you made and how much I should give of myself.
And I actually gave much more than I originally expected. I thought I would just have to stand in a corner with my wedding dress and 1 or 2 big posters saying in very big: 'I WANT TO MARRY YOU'. But you started to ask me a lot of questions that I had to answer in order to gain your confidence. I was naive enough to think that you would spontaneously interact with me without hesitating or even feeling some fear toward with girl asking you to marry her!!!
Finally, I am not sure in which category of storyteller I should include myself, but at the end of this performance, I managed to get married to 52 people! BACK TO CONTENT

Did you really need to lie to your closest friends and family?

I would like to apologize in front of all the friends and family members who truly believed in this announcement and who could feel for this reason a little bit offended or betrayed by me today after what they considered as a 'simulation' and a 'lie'.
Now that this is said, I want to bring some nuances to the term 'lie' that I wilfully use into quotation marks.
I agree with my friends and family when they consider the wedding invitation I sent them as a lie, even if I actually got married, but in my own definition of marriage. But the problem was that this definition was unknown by them.
Isn't it like somebody saying 'I LOVE YOU'. We all have our own definition of 'LOVE'. So nobody really lies by saying it. However, the difference between LOVE and MARRIAGE is that LOVE hasn't been (fortunately) institutionalized (yet).
So, this wedding announcement was a lie, or what I would call 'a fake dialogue'. Did I go too far in the lie? Maybe... This raises another question that I won't have time to develop in this dissertation and which is to know where are the limits between Art and private life, and if we should use any mean in purpose of our Art?
This lie was part of the 'storytelling' whom YOU were the main protagonists and even authors and I didn't expect such an enthusiasm in a wedding I thought you wouldn't believe in at all. As a result I really started to enjoy keeping this lie and even growing it through my daily posts on my blog. So my project followed the direction YOUR response gave it, and for me that's the most interesting part of this project.

On the contrary, the performance I did in Hyde Park, that Sunday, can't be considered as a lie for the spectators who were there. Indeed, it was obvious for them, that I was playing and that this ceremony wasn't done in the tradional way: there was no priest, no mayor, no witnesses; the certificates were designed on computer, the rings hand-made...
I offered the public a story I asked them to be part of, like the protagonist of a novel or the actors of a theatre play. And they had the choice to accept or not. It was a fiction, a role-playing, a dressing game that children like playing: 'let's do as if I am.... your future wife'
And for the person who shouted in the crowd: 'It is fake! It is funking fake!', I answered her: "Yes it is! of course!"
But I would like to point at the fact that a story shouldn't necessarily be seen as a lie. When The Little Prince ask the aviator in the desert to draw a sheep for him, the aviator draws a holed box instead and ask The little Prince to imagine a sheep sleeping inside.
Maybe my wedding wasn't a 'real' ceremony in the sense that it didn't follow the norms, but the whole human experience that this wedding package was containing was 100% true! The important aspect of this project wasn't the shape it took but rather its substance, that is to say, the experience itself. We shared something real together, YOU and ME, and this fact can't be denied. I invited you to be part of my life if you accepted me as part of yours.
And for those who thought I was just using human feelings for the purpose of a college work, I can certify that I completely forgot my goals by doing it on the 9th of October. Moreover, I hope that at the end, the whole project represents more than just an academic 3rd year context project. I think I managed to free myself from this academicism, and what will stay in my mind and I hope in those who married me this day, is not the thousand of words I am writing today, but the 52 kisses given in a wonderful sun, all these rings we exchanged, and the certificates I stamped, the 2 bottle of Champagne, the hundreds of coconut biscuits, about 300 witnesses, thousands of laughs and claps, more than 700 photographs, 2 hours of video, and a blog in the success of which YOU go on contributing in, thanks to your comments... And all this is not a fraud! It is 100% true!

To come back to a more academic analysis, at the end, I think I managed to make the difference between two types of discourse:
- The lie or monologue, unidirectional
- The dialogue, reciprocal
The first one is used everyday by our consumerist society based on appearance, image and surveillance. We look at you, we make you buy and appear, but we don't even listen to you.
The second one, is the one is based on exchange, experience, feelings, action. It is towards what our society seems to evolve and I hope will go on evolving.
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I am sorry, but I see it as a crime!

'Crime & Design!' The nail on the head!

At the very beginning of my researches, I started to work on 'voyeurism and exhibitionism' which are both 'considered as sexual deviances and perversions in the field of psychology, and can be criminal in the eye of the law.' Brett Kahr, IDEAS IN PSYCHOANALYSIS: Exhibitionism. So from this I drew the the conclusion that ,in a sense, we can all be considered as criminals since we live in a society based on a voyeuristic/exhibitionist relationships.
I was more particularly interested in the fact that voyeurs never interact or communicate with the individual who is the focus of the message. Voyeurs need only watch; they don't interact.
This is a unidirectional, not interactive nature of communication. Indeed voyeurs (also mediated voyeurs behind their screen), watch from a distance-a very safe distance and silent distance from which no interaction with the individual who is the focus of the voyeuristic message is necessary. On TV, (Reality TV like Big Brother for example), we can simply watch people's problems, free from commitment to them, like the customer serviced by a prostitute or a Peep Show dancer ceases involvement with the person when the sex or the show is over. The dialogue is purely internal, a distinct form of intrapersonal communication.
ex: Rear window by Hitchcock: 'The voyeuristic protagonist, Jefferies, fractures his relationships with his close neighbours through his voyeurism. He doesn't take time to get to know them as real people, but instead knows them by the silly monikers he attaches to them. He knows nothing about them, and because of this he has to make up stories about them from imaginations.' HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT: The definitive study, by Francois Truffaut.
And the same is true in the building you live: we know each other through an indirect eye. We build our own fiction about our neighbour. We judge the other on the appearance, the image that we see through the hole in the wall, which is just part of a bigger reality.
So to illustrate this, I started to break into my neighbours' private places: I took pictures of people's interior flats through the mailbox slot on each door. What I could see through them is a parcel of their private space, which gave me an idea of who they could be and what they could do.... but only a subjective idea that my imaginative mind started to build.
see this project on my blog

I then wanted to show that while looking can invade the privacy of others and objectify them, it can also reveal its objects as subjects and preserve their human dimension. Indeed, watching not only satisfies our individual desires but also promotes community in otherwise often anonymous and impersonal urban settings in which apartment dwellers often have little or no contact with their next door neighbours: voyeurs learn about the lives of others (lifestyles, behaviours, and activities.) A desire to make comparisons of our lives with others, a need to see what really exists 'out there' beyond our home.
I wanted to show that voyeurism can change from an unauthorized and individualist looking, an antithesis to neighbourliness, to caring for the man next door, the essence of neighbourliness, by getting people involved in their neighbours' life. Not just watch to watch, but watch to know more about them and start to interact with them.
So the second step of my experiment consisted in dividing the building where I live into 2 teams: the Sunset and the Sunrise. And according to which part of the building people were living in (East or West) I asked residents of each team to take a picture of the sunset or the sunrise from their window and to leave it on the common board on the ground floor, so that the Sunset people could know what the sunrise looks like, and the Sunrise people could enjoy their missing sunset.
So I wasn't observing my neighbours in a perverse and unidirectional way anymore. I was still peeping in their life, but with their agreement, and not in an intrusive way. I didn't want to push any mailbox slot anymore. I wanted them to open it for me.
And at the same time, through this project, I was starting to interact with people: I wasn't only asking them to let me see through their eyes, I was offering them in exchange the possibility to see through all the other residents' eyes.
see this project on my blog

And the last move in my mind was to try to build this interaction and viewing game outside my building. So I decided to choose another community: the passers-by.
How can I make strangers in the street interact with a person they don't know and tell her details about their private life without being given the impression of being watched?
'Tell me a story... ' Didn't Sophie Calle do the same few years ago, for the White Night annual event in Paris? She put her bed on top of the Eiffel Tower and stayed in all the night, asking people to go up and tell her their most amazing story so that she could stay awake the whole night.
So I thought: 'What about organizing a similar public event somewhere in London and asking people to tell me more about them in the form of a story?' That's how my wedding project is born.
But this time I am accused of another crime: not voyeurism anymore, but lie and tease towards the sacred institution of marriage!!! Nobody in this last project really noticed that by asking people to write a story about themselves, my act was purely voyeuristic. Why? Because there was an exchange: These people revealed me something about themselves, and in exchange I revealed myself to them in a spectacle. A reciprocal gaze had place between them and me: they look at me looking at them, or what is called, the 'look back'. Where was the voyeur? Where was the exhibitionist? The roles were inversed, and even abolished. The borders were blurred. There was no barrier between us anymore.
The interaction was total. BACK TO CONTENT

Why a CD album?

If the wedding is a narrative, it is recorded these days in the wedding album or video or DVD, or all three. John Lennon and Yoko Ono appeared to be sending up the sacred and stereotypical nature of the wedding album when they released their LP recording titled Wedding Album in 1969. The sense remained, however, that they were not so much rejecting the notion of the traditional wedding album as trying to make something fresh of it - in other words, to enliven and individualise the concept.
This is exactly what I aimed at doing through my own project. I wanted to offer YOU a new and innovative way of getting married. And this wedding album that I decided to call 'Our Wedding Album' is the fruit of OUR commune piece of work.
I included inside the different stories YOU wrote me, as part of the 'greater narrative' I was talking about earlier on, the music tracks I played during OUR wedding on the 9th, as well as the video of the ceremony.
I would like to precise at this point that apart from the musical buzzer that I found and then inserted in a home-made red-clothed heart, and of course the music tracks that are a selection I did from existing artists' songs, I entirely designed this album (Instead of loosing my time trying to find a ready made red-clothed heart, I chose to spend this time sewing with love and patience the one you saw on the CD case).
This CD also works as a teasing for the reader who didn't know about the ceremony and who would like to have a closer (and voyeuristic) look at OUR Love Story, that is to say the blog.
Finally it works as an interactive piece too, since I designed it in such a way that the reader can customize this album, detach some parts, fill in some other ones, stick his photograph and transform the album itself into a frame. BACK TO CONTENT

Why the Speakers Corner?

Located on the corner of Park Lane and Cumberland Gate, opposite Marble Arch tube, Speakers' Corner is the spiritual home of the British democratic tradition of soapbox oratory.
Every Sunday since the right of free assembly was recognised in 1872, people from all walks of life have gathered to listen to speeches about anything and everything... and to heckle.
Amongst those who have attended meetings there, are the some of the most influential figures in world history like Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels and Lenin.

The coherence of the speakers varies greatly as do the topics of discussion, but as a whole it makes for great street theatre.
Indeed, the Speakers' Corner is like an open theatre stage, a place to view and be viewed, and an ideal place for storytelling, the modern 'Areopagus of Free Speech'.
There are no entry requirements, no rules of intellectual formality and above all no class restrictions. It is as Leslie James, the Hyde Park pamphleteer wrote, a fitting location to represent 'the century of the common man.'
It is precisely these characteristics that mark out Speaker's Corner as a strange and exciting place, a place where mankind meets itself, discusses, debates, and shares ideas, in a generally pleasurable atmosphere.
'When you consider that there is nothing to buy here, there is no music, just human interaction without the mediation of machines and without any protection from the weather you begin to get a small glimpse of the significance of this place.'Leslie James

That's why this place completely suited my goals through this project.
If I wanted people just to look at me, I could have chosen any crowded and touristic place in London, like Trafalgar Square or Covent Garden. Some people would have eventually given me some coins, thinking I would be performing for money! But this not what I was looking for. And I didn't want a passive reaction from the public neither. I wanted them to respond to my project, and it is what most of the people, either talkers or listeners who choose to go to the Speakers' Corner every Sunday are looking for as well. They want to open the debate and their voice to be heard.
Some of the spectators criticised me violently, and others played the game with delight. But either positive or negative reaction I got from my public, I wasn't just a spectacle for them. My project, like the other talkers' show, was the opportunity for the spectators to show themselves as a spectacle: when somebody was starting to interact with me, all the gazes were suddenly turning in his direction.
In such a place the borders between voyeur and exhibitionist are completely blurred. Each entity gazes at each other, performs, and shares. The groups are mixed, the theatre scene disappears, and everybody is put at the same level. The interaction is total. Again. BACK TO CONTENT


What is a blog?

The web log phenomenon is a democratic activity that allows each writer to write every day on the net about anything.
'The appeal of each web log is grounded thoroughly in the personality of its writer: his interests, his opinions, and his personal mix of links and commentary.' Rebecca blood, The Web Log Handbook (p.6)
What makes the differences between a website and a web log:
- A web log is a webpage with new entries placed at the top, updated frequently-sometimes several times a day.
- Often, at the side of the page is a list of links pointing to other sites. 'New web loggers establish residence and assign themselves a neighbourhood with their links to other blogs.' Rebecca blood, The Web Log Handbook (p.151). So these links work as a corridor between your blog and your 'neighbours' one'.
- With the addition of a comment system, many web logs actively solicit ideas and opinions from their reader.
It exists different kind of web logs from the business web log to the sex web log, going through photo web logs, travel web logs, wedding web logs, historical web logs, humour web logs, project web logs, and so on...
However, we can divide them into three very broad categories: blogs, online journal, and filters.
a- The blog: The writer posts his ideas, his thinking, and his ruminations in short stories pieces, and not necessarily in a chronological order. He is searching for a dialogue with the reader.
b- The online journal: The writer posts chronological self-experiences, feelings of everyday, his inner world. He is searching for self-enlightenment. It is more a monologue. He wants his diary to be read.
c- The filter: The primacy is given to the link. It is not necessarily a personal piece, but a more practical one. The writer wants to show the reader, the world outside his door. As a result, we are revealed the web bloger's personality from the outside in, through his relation to the larger world. BACK TO CONTENT

Why containing your project in a blog?

My wedding project is contained into a blog whose link you can also find at the end of this dissertation.
The visitor of the blog can follow the whole project from the wedding announcement, to the last post I did yesterday.
I choose to create a blog for several reasons:

1.To create an online representation of my thinking:
This blog works as a visual aid, to let everybody know about the story and follow it day by day, as well as a way for me to put my ideas about my this project all together:
- Everything starts from a banal wedding announcement. The following posts are about the organisation of the ceremony and give information to the guesses (where the ceremony is supposed to take place, directions to go there, gift registries...and any other information you would normally find in a Wedding Blog.)
- I then post some more details about the preparation of the ceremony (showing pictures of the cake, the dress, the music, the ring...) and the identity of both the groom and the bride, without never revealing the truth, but on the contrary growing the 'lie', just as a teasing... until the day following the Hen night: THE ACTUAL CEREMONY OF MARRIAGE, on the 9th of October.
- After that, I decide to reveal the truth to both French and English community.
- The next step is an explanation of OUR Love Story, between me and the public, in the form of a flashback:
This flashback serves as presentation of the different experiences I have been doing on 'voyeurism and exhibitionism' since I arrived in St Martins, and during my trip in America. But I actually turn them into chapters of a Love Story through which I explain the evolution of OUR relationships, from the first voyeuristic encounter to the actual interactive wedding ceremony.
- Finally, I close this flashback, and go on displaying my fictitious Love Story with my 52 husbands: I post visuals of our wedding day, and at the end decide to go on Honey Moon...
- The outcomes of this story is double:
First of all, I decide to enlarge my "harem" and to marry more people on the net still in exchange of a story that they can send me by Internet. I then send them a stamped certificate of marriage.
And I also offer my husbands the opportunity to use this 'lie' to create their own lie, and tell their family and friends about their marriage with a French 24 years old girl. A lie within a lie, a 'mise en abime', an expanding virus, a spate of narratives.... I couldn't find a better overture.

2.To create an online representation of myself, in other words: to exhibit myself
If Internet can become an extension of the physical environment, a personal web logs that works as an online journal, when updated regularly, can become an extension of day-to-day life. As Rebecca Blood says: 'You expand your offline life into an online existence.'
A blog is a real time record of your private world whose every intimate detail is suddenly published for public consumption.
And the screen of the computer works as an open window on your life.
Blogs are also generally published by a single person or a group of people who lack access to traditional means of broadcast.
It is indeed, a good way to get known, or a good calling card (or at least a good address to put on your business card).
So a blog is a publicity of your private life, a written Big Brother. From private your life becomes public. Lots of examples of exhibitionist bloggers can be found on the net. But one of them particularly drew my attention for its simplicity and even naivety in tone: this girl who everyday posts a thing she likes or doesn't like. Simply that. Who is she writing this for? Who does she want to be read by? Maybe nobody. Maybe she only aims at listing all this things, as a child would do on a piece of paper. But, by deliberately publishing them on the net, she becomes an exhibitionist at the same level than those who publish erotic pictures of them.
Indeed, exhibitionism doesn't necessarily have to be sexual. It can just mean behaving so as to attract attention.
But who really cares about the tastes of this unknown person? Maybe more people than you could imagine. Why millions of people are so interested in following the everyday life complete strangers in Big Brother program? Because humans are perpetually seeking knowledge about other humans.
I would finally want to point at the fact that a blog can show your personality, your self, even without posting any personal comments.
Indeed, at the end of this project, by connecting together like a puzzle or a mosaic, this patchwork of posts, ideas, and comments that constitute my blog, the reader should be able to perceive the whole pattern of my personality.

3.To watch you
You watch me through my blog, but do you know that I am watching you at the same time?
By making you participate in my blog, I change your state from voyeur/reader, to exhibitionist/writer. Through my blog, I produce web bloggers and I learn a little bit more about you by reading your comments.

4.To interact with the reader
Whatever kind of blog you create, you aim (consciously or not) at building a community, a 'blogosphere', and to connect people to each other.
'SHARING': this is what a web log is originally made for.
'A new voice will emerge, that of the web log itself, a synthesis of many viewpoints that merge to create a distinct community.' Rebecca blood, The Web Log Handbook (p.13)
A blog is not a lonely or selfish activity, but an interaction with the man next door, an exchange of ideas, a real network, a public sphere to discuss and debate.
It is a revival of antique Greek Agoras.
It is a long-standing tradition in the web log community to actively solicit reader input and expertise.
And because it invites participation through comments, it creates a virtual social connection. But also because it is based on links. 'Web bloggers who link to one another recognize their ability to leverage virtual social connections into ad hoc networks, enabling each of them to amplify his individual voice.' Rebecca blood, The Web Log Handbook (p.10)
The links serve to bring to the attention of their readers websites and articles that would otherwise go unnoticed. And it is also a genuinely new way for news to be collected, analysed, and distributed.

In the same way, my own blog is an on-going story whose writing you participate actively through your daily comments.
It is OUR common book. It is OUR blog. BACK TO CONTENT

What about the design of this blog?

Each web logger creates a personal version of the web log format, didacted by purpose, interest, and whim. The web log is definitively malleable and may be adapted to almost any end.
'The very best blogs, in my opinion, are designed to accommodate unexpected turns to allow for a little experimentation.' Rebecca blood, The Web Log Handbook (p.9)
So a web log is a public creative space to express one's personality. For web designers, a web log can be a place to really play with the medium, a place where you are the king.

The general aspect of my 3 pieces of work (performance scenery in Hyde Park, CD album, and Web log) is both interactive and ‘Kitsch’ :

-The interactivity :
My wedding in Hyde Park was an interactive performance in the sense that I encouraged the public participation in it.
As for my blog, I wanted it to become a kind of curiosity cabinet offering the reader plenty of elements to peep, watch, read and enjoy.
A blog is already interactive by definition. But I was looking for an even more interactive piece, where the reader wouldn't be only a reader, but also an actor. I deliberately included links to press, video to download, slideshows to start, in addition to the usual comments area where the reader can respond to each post and make his opinion public.
At the end, it looks like a box of tricks, or a messy flea market plenty of treasures to discover.
And the same is true for Our Wedding Album: I called it ‘our’ because I wanted the reader to have in his hand his own wedding story…with me as a bride !

-The ‘kitsch’ aspect :
'You are wilfully mocking the very serious marriage institution!' would say my opponents. And I could reply that I am just producing a cheap sentimental work like those we can find produced for the mass market, such as those found in souvenir shops and chain stores, just to emphasize the commercial aspect that tends to make the wedding ceremony more and more tasteless nowadays. But since my opinion on the values of marriage is not the central aspect of my study, I would rather reply nothing.
This hyperbolic and ‘over-the-top’ visual aspect of my pieces also contributed to the rise of the ‘lie’.
BACK TO CONTENT

I don't really consider your wedding thing as 'Art'!

I won't start to discuss about what is Art and what is not. Other people did it before me, better than I could actually do.
I will just refer to others artists that used wedding as part as their project, or even as their project itself.
Among others, the artist, Alix Lambert, in 1993, undertook her 'Wedding Project', marrying and then divorcing three men and a woman within six months. She displayed her wedding certificates, divorce papers, wedding pictures and wedding presents in her gallery showing. This really seemed like the fast food approach to getting hitched (Greene 1998, Online).
Charon Luebbers transforms the marriage between same sex couples into the offence it is heralded as by those opposed to same sex matrimony. Tony DeCarlo offers a sincere and touching defence of the act of marriage between same sexes couples with his work 'Stop the Ban on Love.' Using photos from the beginning of the 20th century and manipulating them, Joe Heidecker challenges the traditional definitions of love through his homoerotic depictions of love and the interaction of two individuals. Tim Clifford's work works with the traditional signs of marital and familiar security and twists them, revealing the harmonious vacuity always latent within any sugar-coated image of the family and 'traditional values.' For Ginnie Lupi and Natasha Sazanova the idea of marriage is turned inside out in a dream-like play of self, other and narrative. Contiguous with the traditional image of marriage as a male-female domestic space is the work of William Oberst... and the list could go on.

What I did this 9th of October was a performance art, that I transcribed at the same time in the form of a virtual design (the blog), and finally a physical piece to be touched and manipulated (the wedding album). These 3 different mediums are here to convey ae common idea that I fully explain throughout this dissertation.

And for those who are still not sure about performance as a piece of Art, this is the definition given on the net (Wikipedia) about performance design: 'An art where the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and a particular time, constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. It is opposed to painting or sculpture, for example, where an object constitutes the work.
Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream activities such as theatre, dance, music, storytelling, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. This is a term usually reserved to refer to a kind of usually avant-garde or conceptual art that grew out of the visual area. The roots of this art lie in early 20th-century modernist experiments with mixed media, particularly in Dada performances. The direct antecedent of performance art, however, can be found in the happenings of the late 1950s and the 1960s with the work of artists such as Allan Kaprow, Vito Acconci, Hermann Nitsch and Joseph Beuys.'

I am not using this definition in order to persuade my opponents that what I did on the 9th of October was Art. Because at the end it doesn't really matter, whether or not it was Art. The most important point is that, either I appealed to the public or I shocked him into reassessing their own notions of Art, I did something accessible to the largest audience. I offered my public the opportunity to gain access to my piece, and even to be the part of it. I brought art into the street. BACK TO CONTENT

What is interactive art?

- The Royal College of Art's definition: The Department of Interaction Design explores the role of technology in people's lives and imaginations. Essentially, we represent an alliance between electronics and humanities. Our teaching, our designs – all are as much about culture and society as about emerging technologies.
- Fotogallery definition on the web: Works of art intended for the viewer's direct participation. Normally this participation is made possible by computer technology.
- Wikipedia definition on the web: Interactive art is a piece of art that involves the spectator in some way. Some sculptures achieve this by letting the observer walk in, on, and around the piece. Other works include computers and sensor to respond to motion, heat or other types of input. Many pieces of Internet art and electronic art are highly interactive. Sometimes visitors are able to navigate through a hypertext environment; some works accept textual input from outside; sometimes the audience can influence the course of a performance or can even participate in it.
Interactive Art can be distinguished from Reactive Art, Electronic Art, or Immersive Art in that it is a dialog between the piece and the participant; specifically, the participant has 'agency' (the ability to act upon) the piece and is furthermore invited to do so in the context of the piece, i.e. the piece has 'affordance' or 'affords' the interaction. In contrast, Reactive Art tends to be a monologue -- the artwork may change form in the presence of the viewer but the viewer may not be invited to engage in the reaction but 'merely' enjoy it.
- And I will finish with the definition that Andy Cameron (la Fabrica) gives to interactive design in the book The Art of Experimental Interactive Design, when it compares it to other 'more established modes of communication which have longer histories and more clearly defined languages - cinema, print or broadcast media for example':
'These media involve a linear presentation with a clearly defined separation between the sender of the message - the author- and the receiver of the message- the audience. The form of the message is broadly that of the proposition or statement - the author tells the audience something about the world, more often than not within a narrative structure.
Interactive media, by contrast involves a blurring of the line between author and audience in which the audience, in a certain extent, participates in the creation of the message itself.'

What I understand from these different definitions of 'interactive art', is that it is a recent practice, and the language of interactivity is still developing through experiments around the medium and the audience, in order to find a new way for people to communicate with this medium - a more playful and charming one based on direct experience, and primary human feelings, more than on appearance and flat visuals.
This is a more democratic approach to the medium where voice is given to the audience: ' The sounds toys - or new instruments - of today are having a similar effect in blurring the line between musician and non-musician and allowing more people to cross over from listening to performing.' Andy Cameron. Interactive Art says things in a simple way, contrary to all these elitist contemporary pieces of work we can find today, and that don't speak directly to the public.
As a consequence,'... many interactive pieces can hardly be said to contain a message at all, at least not in form of a proposition or statement. Rather they involve the audience within a situation that they are invited to explore, or they offer the audience a game or toy that they are invited to play with. The meaning of the experience becomes the experience itself.'
'A good interactive design may be weak on reference but full of something else, best described as emotional.' And he gives the example of a piece called Flower power created by Antenna for Bloomingdales in New York, in which the line of neon flowers in the store window light up as people pass by on the street outside. 'The meaning lies in the playfulness of the experience, a primary sense of charm and delight in the very responsiveness of the artefact, rather than in any more elaborate statement about flowers, or light, or walking'. In interactivity what is important is the moment (sometimes ephemeral) when this interaction with the public occurs.
In the same way, my wedding project is not directly about wedding or voyeurism, or any other 'big' concept. It is foremost about interaction, entertainment, ideas sharing...it is about the experience itself, the delight to meet people, and spend few hours with them playing in a relaxed and playful atmosphere.
In an interactive piece what is important is not the shape, but the burden. This wedding worked as a 'pretext' for the interaction to happen.
A lot of people the day of the ceremony didn't understand WHY I was doing this project and asked me what was my goal behind it. I replied them: 'Don't think too much about it. Just enjoy it.'

Finally, interactive Art and Design work very closely with narratives. An interactive piece is very often an interactive storytelling: 'All, like the best videogames, involve the audience within a playful situation, all impart a sense of charm which has to be experienced to be fully appreciated, none of them are overly concerned with 'truth', at least not in the sense that might be recognised by a Greek philosopher.'
I could give the example of all these video games offering the player a virtual identity and a virtual and often fantastic story to live. DARE, one of Fabrica's interactive installation in which the visitors to the show became the actual authors of the show, by inviting the audience to record their gestures and expressions in real time, is another good example. Everything was saved to a disk with a date and stamp. The Artwork was growing overtime into a complex sequence of visual rhythm and counterpoint: ‘because it keeps a record of everything that happens within it, DARE is both an interactive artwork and a form of documentation - a sort of narrative of its own creation. The visitor can choose to play for him/herself, or watch a sequence created by others. DARE connects the 'now' of play with the 'then' of narrative and so blurs the line between artist and audience'. Andy Cameron, Fabrica.

So, I would sum up this talkative definition of interactive Art and Design by defining it as the 'emerging language' of our modern society. Indeed, if interactivity exists since few years, it is just the beginning of its application within people's way of communicating with the medium: I could cite among others, interactive TV that gives you a big range of choices, interactive window displays (Selfridges' ones often play with the passer-by, and once even used real people instead of mannequines), or interactive advertising: a good example are the bus shelters that more and more use interactive systems, like the recent peepshow box, an advertising for the Blue Tooth device on mobile phones that allows you to download erotic movies from your mobile. People had to look through a hole on a black box, to peep at a caricatural pornographic movie.
The world of interactivity is growing and slowing drawing the face of the next generation.
And... Who knows: 'maybe interactivity can help give control to more people, and things will change.' Nick Knight. BACK TO CONTENT

But an interactive piece is already predefined by its author! So does it give a real liberty of action to its spectator?

'Reactive behaviour of most interactive works is defined by a computer program which is written in advance by the artist, or by a programmer realizing the artist's wishes.‘ David Rockeby, a media installation artist who often uses video surveillance system as part of his interactive pieces.
'Like the artist constructing an 'apparatus of signs' which anticipates and supports subjective readings, the interactive artist, according to pioneer interactive artist Myron Krueger, 'anticipates the participant's possible reactions and composes different relationships for each alternative.' Although, the artist has made room for the spectator's subjective readings of the work'.
Indeed, even if I have to admit that I started my wedding project few months in advance and that I tried to plan how people would respond to my performance, when I actually did it on the 9th I didn't expect most of the public's reactions and had to improvise a lot.
So, as the composer Henry Cowell commented in a discussion of these compositions:
'...it is evident that much more remains to be done in this direction'.
But this is only the beginning of an emerging language... and I can bet that in a very close future, a solution will be found... until the next challenge. BACK TO CONTENT

Can the simple fact of pushing a button be considered as interaction?

Yes it can, if by pushing this button you are offered a unique experience. On the contrary, I don't think the simple fact of pushing the button of a vending machine can be considered as interactive since the machine only offers you something to consume.
What is more, an interactive piece of work becomes 'alive' and starts to bear a meaning only when the user interacts with it. You become actor and not only receiver, an echo of Marcel Duchamp's famous declaration, ' The spectator makes the picture.'
For this to happen, an interactive piece doesn't necessarily require high technology devices. Interactivity ranges from a simple hand-made flip book that starts to tell you a story when you manipulate it, to these video games featuring a virtual 3 dimensional world by way of a very complex high-technological system.
And in between there is my street performance and I. I didn't use any special effect, any advance technology. I did what Rafael Lozano-Hemmer would call 'an anti-monument'. 'A monument is something that represents power, or selects a piece of history and tries to materialise it, visualise it, represent it, always from the point of view of the elite. The anti-monument on the contrary is an action, a performance. Everybody is aware of its artificiality', like everybody was aware of the fake aspect of my wedding. 'It is something that people may partake in, ad hoc, knowing it is a deceit, a special effect', does he says when he is talking about one of his piece, BODY MOVIES.
So although interactive artwork usually uses technology, 'the implied transformation of the relationship between art and audience can be traced back to roots that predate the existence of interactive technologies.' David Rockeby
Thus, certain kind of literature can also be consider as highly interactive, especially when the reader identifies himself to the protagonist of the story and 'uses his or her imagination to construct a subjective world upon the skeleton of the text.'
Can this dissertation be considered as an interactive piece thanks to the choice that is given to readers in the hypertable of contents and the links he can click on throughout in order to learn more about specific facts? I leave you the liberty to answer it.BACK TO CONTENT

The project AMAZE ME: what is the link with your own project?

AMAZE ME could appear like 'an uninvited guess' in the series of posts I did on my blog since the beginning. Indeed, it appears in the middle of the wedding information I am revealing little by little to my readers, between the half unmasking of the identity of the groom, and the unveiling of my wedding ring.
But for those of you who believed in the truth of this wedding announcement until the end, the AMAZE ME should have been a very good clue on the lie. What is it about?
AMAZE ME project has been launched in September by SHOWstudio and is now entering the judging phase.
SHOWstudio was set up by the photographer Nick Knight as a space for personal and experimental work exploring the potential of online and interactive technologies.
In March 2004, SHOWstudio launched a project called TALKING LIBERTIES inviting passers-by to photograph themselves on the street, using an interactive sensor connected inside the Liberty store window. Nearly 10 000 anonymous pictures were created by Londoners. For Nick Knight, TALKING LIBERTIES represents a way to engage directly with his audience. 'There can be an unhelpful distance between artist and audience', he says. 'With SHOWstudio we want to take the gap out, demystify the process; re-establish the direct link with the audience. At the same time, the end product of a piece of work is not necessarily the most interesting part. I wanted a way to show how a pike of work evolves, to share the thrill of making stuff, not knowing how it will come out. The work itself is only the conclusion of a process.'
What is it like when the model becomes the photographer, and the photographer loses control over making the picture? 'It is a lot of fun!' he replies. 'The creativity and spontaneity come through so strongly.'
And when he is asked: 'What about a casting project?', he answers: 'You know, I'd love to be able to get my hands on some of those people, but I can't get hold of them because they don't put their addresses in!'. He never spoke a truer word: In September of this year, this Nick Knight launched AMAZE ME project inspired by the brief issued by art director Alexi Brodovitch to photographer Richard Avedon - simply to 'amaze him'. The challenge asked you, the public, to respond to a brief set by a panel of six leading creative industry figures. It was a unique opportunity for anybody to impress one of them by performing during 30 seconds in front of a camera and leaving your details. The best six entries will win a PSP™ (Playstation®Portable), plus an exclusive opportunity to work with the panellist you attempted to amaze.
So last September, while I was organising my wedding ceremony, I heard about AMAZE ME project and really found a strong link between it and my own interactive marriage project, both offering passers-by the opportunity to create their own narrative. 'Even within the apparent constraints of a single image format, people have created stories, fight sequences, fashion shoots and visual gags. It is as if they want to extend their one shot at self-definition into a sequence, creating their own narrative.' Ross Phillips, talking about TALKING LIBERTIES project.
So at the end, I had the idea to answer the challenge by advertising my project to each of these 6 creative people.
An interaction performance inside another one...
I was told few days ago than I was among the shortlist... Final results will be announced on the 28th of November. A story worth following... BACK TO CONTENT

What is this 'barrier' between the viewer and the viewed you are always talking about?

'Look around the room. Now leave the room, close the door and look through the keyhole. See how dramatic the view of the room changes'.Richard Balze, Peepshows: a visual history.
The barrier, or what Marianne Karabelnik also calls the 'wall of prohibition', in the book STRIPPED BARE: the body revealed in contemporary art ,is there to create a separation between the voyeur and the exhibitionist. This separation can be either visible: TV, camera and computer screens, doors, shop windows, curtains, walls, or more abstract: pedestal, scene...
This wall of prohibition also symbolises the norms of the society, the morality whose foundation is the separation between public and private.
And depending on which kind of separation your are looking through, but also:
- The size of the surface we watch through (bull’s eye, mail box slot, cinema screen...),
- The importance of the surface revealed (more or less hidden, fractured...),
- The physical distance between the viewer and the viewed, the context as well as the time one spends to look at you,
- And the type of gaze (look, stare, gaze, glance, observation, analysis...),
your position will change from spectator to voyeur, and your behaviour will be considered as criminal or not.
But in any case, this separation prevents the viewer from any interaction with the person who is viewed. On the contrary it leads to an objectification of the viewed and a 'virtualisation' of the communication between people.
As a consequence this system only offers desire that you can't fulfil, and a feeling of frustration.
'What you see is not what you get' could become the slogan of this society where we are living now and that only offers us dreams. And I would even go further in saying that even when transparent, these barriers prevent of from really seeing. We are like blind persons imprisoned in a transparent cube. The transparency doesn't help them to see the world better since they can't touch this world.
Dan Graham in his book Private/Public gives the example of the glass used in shop windows: 'The glass used for the show-case, displaying products, isolates the consumer from the product at the same time as it superimposes the mirror-refection of his own image onto the goods displayed. This alienation, paradoxically, helps arouse the desire to possess the commodity...while denying access to them'. What is more, 'The goods are often displayed as part of a human mannequin - an idealized image of the consumer'. And he applies this example to the relationships between human beings: 'Capitalistic society makes all personal relations between men take the form of objective relations between things... Social relations are transformed into 'qualities of... things themselves'.

And while women are window-shopping, men go to the peepshow! It is their way of doing shopping (indeed, cubicles could be compared to booths in a peepshow). This comparison might sounds ironic, but the same analysis can be applied to shops and peepshows :
Beyond the window of a booth, remains that which one cannot have, though one may view, and maybe it is exactly what is exciting. 'The barrier increases the carnal desire that permeates everyday life that of the other, the panty line, the erect nipple... The enclosure of the booth and the window are transformed into the plane of expression. The man is able to ejaculate not so much because of what he sees but rather because he can not have it... By placing himself in such a situation, he as well places his desire within that enclosure, this is desire internalized.'(www.ambriente.com/writing/lusty_lady.html)
However, here, it seems possible to talk about a dialogue between the client of a peepshow and the dancer. Indeed, 'The enclosure of the booth and the window are transformed into 'a plane of expression'. The transparent window becomes a frame of signs where both the dancer and the client perform and express themselves: 'She may even go so far as to climb onto the bars and press her vulva against the window, for this is the ultimate signifier, within one set of signs, fully exposed'.
But if it is true that we can't really consider the client of a Peep Show as a voyeur and the dancer as an exhibitionist anymore since there is a reciprocal vision between both (they become both spectacle), a mutual objectification occurs from this reflexive spectacle: 'The dancer is able to objectify the male, because he himself must perform if she is to remain at this window.' So if there is interaction between both performer and viewer here, this interaction is fake and the dialogue mute.
An ephemeral simulated sexual interaction: this is the only thing that offers a peepshow as well as sex shops: dildos among other sexual toys can be considered only as a plastic part of a person that somebody needs instead of dealing with the real sex, a substitute fetish for his lack - the lack his desire expresses.

This way of falsely communicating with the others has been imposed to us by our controlling capitalist society that forces us to look passively at central points fixed by her and which exist since the Renaissance discovered the 3-dimentionality in painting: 'The showcase window as a framing or optical device replicates the form of the Renaissance painting's illusionary, three-dimensional 'space'. Like a painting's perspective, it frames a determined view, creating a point of focus - meaning - organised around a central vanishing point'. This is to oppose to anamorphic paintings that criticizes this passive centrality, as Tom Conley explains when drawing this perspective out in a discussion of Holbein and Lacan: 'Anamorphosis means having to abandon the central position in order to see something else together. From the central position, the subject's standpoint, The ambassador looks like 2 ambassadors. From the side, crouch down a little, and the painting becomes the portrait of a skull.'
In the same way, if I had to paint my wedding ceremony onto a framed canvas, I wouldn't paint myself as the vanishing point of the picture, with nothing more around that some trees and the altar. Even if all the gazes were directed on me, I wasn't the only centre of the scene. I was also responding to your gazes by gazing you in return. So this means I would have to include the public of my ceremony inside the painting.
And I would even go further by painting some of the characters in the crowd looking in the direction of the viewer of this painting, so that it would create a triangular gaze by way of a third vanishing point outside standing outside the frame of this painting.

So to sum up, there are 3 different ways to see and to be seen:
1- To see without being seen (like the invisible man). It is when you watch a program on TV, a play at the theatre, and a movie in a cinema.
2- Being seen without seeing:
a/ You know that you are seen: like Big Brother. In this case you act out.
b/ You don't know you are seen: A good example is the CCTV system that could find its origins in the Panopticon of Jeremy Bentham, an utilitarian philosopher and theorist of British legal reform. The Panopticon ("all-seeing") functioned as a round-the-clock surveillance machine. Its design ensured that no prisoner could ever see the 'inspector' who conducted surveillance from the privileged central location within the radial configuration. The prisoner could never know when he was being surveilled - mental uncertainty that in itself would prove to be a crucial instrument of discipline. French philosopher Michel Foucault described the implications of 'Panopticism' in his 1975 work Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison: 'The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.'
3- To see and to be seen.

And these 3 ways of seeing establish 3 different relationships between people:
- The two first cases refer to the unidirectinal gaze of the voyeur or the exhibitionist, when they are not gazing at each other. So there is no interaction at all between each entity. The wall separating them is completely opaque, and one person looks through a hole on this wall. (see my Mail box project in my Blog)
- Then, the third way of seeing could be divided into two types of relationships:
a. The voyeur is looking at the exhibitionist who is looking at him through a transparent wall. So the gaze is reciprocal, and the role inversed (the voyeur becomes exhibitionist, and the way round), but because the wall is still there (even if transparent), the interaction is not full. This wall prevents any kind of socialisation between both entities, like in peepshows, or striptease shows where the stage works as an invisible wall between the dancer and the public.(See my 8 Cordova project in my Blog)
b. There is no wall anymore between the voyeur and the exhibitionist. As a consequence, the dialogue is fully established between both entities that stop bearing their 'voyeuristic' or 'exhibitionist' title. The interaction is total. (see my Wedding project) BACK TO CONTENT

But most of interactive designs use a screen!!!

Yes it is true. So we could say that they fail in directly talking to the player. But at the same time 'they inverse the relationship between audience and screen by making the audience active and the screen receptive' as Scott Snibbe said when he describes one of his work: Shadow that 'presents a static rectangle of white light projected onto a screen. As viewers move in front of the projector, their bodies form shadows on the screen. After viewers move out of the projected beam's path, the movements of their shadows are replayed over and over, gradually fading away and returning to the pure white projection.' In another project Shy, as visitors walk into the field of a projected screen, their bodies disrupt its personal space, and the screen comes alive. The screen jumps, shrikes and cowers at the imposition of the viewers' bodies on its space. If the screen is disturbed too much, it leaves the space of the projection area entirely, and only returns when the visitors leave or slow down. ' These examples show how it is possible to 'make friends with the screen' and how to 'create an active relationship between the embodied light of the screen and the bodies of viewers.' BACK TO CONTENT

Tell me more about the 'look back'.

The 'look back' is when a viewer SUDDENLY changes position from active subject (viewer) to passive object (viewed) of another look. The roles are suddenly inversed.
And its consequence is the shame that Jean Paul Sartre is referring to when he talks about the feeling you can have when you become aware that you are seen looking through a hole, by somebody else, a third eye, the Other.
But one should note that for some people, the risk to be seen is something exciting. It is what we call in psychological terms "agrexophilia": the arousal by being caught or seen. Agrexophiliac persons are consequently both voyeur and exhibitionist.

The 'look back' is often used in cinema either in the narrative and in 'real life', between the spectator of the movie and one of the protagonist: It is when Jeff's look, the protagonist of Rear window by Hitchcock, suddenly meets the murderer's one when this latter suddenly catches Jeff looking at him from his flat in the opposing building.
Another example is the movie Peeping Tom by Michael Powell, where Mark, the protagonist forces his victims to meet their own terrified gaze in a mirror before killing them.
The 'look back' can also be used in painting: It is the case of Las Meninas by Velasquez, where the spectators are observing themselves being observed by the painter.
And the 'look back' was finally the central subject of one of my project, 8 Cordova where I was recording passers-by in the public space of the street, looking at me in the private space of my lounge, a concept previously imagined by Dan Graham.
As for my wedding project: I was also watching you watching me...but contrary to all the other examples I gave before, there wasn't any surprise effect: indeed, you were not really caught watching me, precisely because of the absence of barrier between us, because of the interaction.

So the 'look back' is when the distance between viewer and viewed is suddenly broken, and the barrier I talked earlier becomes a mirror. It is like reading somebody's private journal that would be printed on mirror pages showing us ourselves staring into the page. It is when the unidirectional gaze of the voyeur becomes a 'mirror' gaze. Denzin, Voyeur watches a Voyeur, or in De Bolla's words: 'to see ourselves in the eyes of the other.'
Marcel Duchamp expresses the idea of the artwork as a mirror in his work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. In his discussion of this work, Octavio Paz notes:
'Duchamp's painting is a transparent glass; as a genuine monument it is inseparable from the place it occupies and the space that surrounds it; it is an incomplete painting that is perpetually completing itself. Because it is an image that reflects the image of whoever contemplates it, we are never able to look at it without seeing ourselves.'
'The work is mirror, image and window combined. The spectator's reflection mingles with the images inscribed on the glass, and with the gallery space, the viewing context, seen through the glass. ‘David Rockeby.

So while the 'wall of prohibition' separates the viewer from the viewed, the 'look back' breaks it and the opaque wall becomes a fantasy window through which one sees his own possibilities reflected back to him. It is related to the Lacan's mirror stage. Jacques Lacan's analysis of the mirror stage denotes the constitutive moment when the child recognizes his own image in the mirror and identifies with an image of himself. We suddenly identify ourselves with the objects or subjects on the screen: TV Reality shows reveal us how we live by showing on the screen people like us in their everyday life, in the same way than opposite building's windows that Jeff is peeping through in Rear window, reveal people's private life and reflect his different possible future lives with Lisa, her girlfriend.
And in my wedding project, I dressed up as a bride, I played another role different from the one the society gave me. Like Cindy Sherman I was mixing fiction and reality by way of a masquerade of identity, this in order to make people recognize something of them rather than me. So in a sense, I also became a mirror of the society by exposing the usual codes of representation (the bride and her wedding dress) in a media saturated era. BACK TO CONTENT

Do you consider yourself as a voyeur or an exhibitionist?

For those who asked me this question I replied by a question: 'What about yourself?'
I think that there is a part of exhibitionism and voyeurism in each of us. We all live to see and to be seen.
This blog gave me the opportunity to talk about myself and to be read, in the same way that this my wedding ceremony offered me the '15 minutes of fame' (in fact 3 hours!) that everybody should have once in his life, according to what Andy Warhol said.
I won't fully disagree with people who will reduce this project to just a way to satisfy my narcissist tendencies, but I will add that all the persons who get married and all those who either keep bogs or comment them, exhibit themselves.... and it is without taking into account the artists that exhibit their work in galleries, and those who spend time every day (any long it could be), caring about the way they dress or they arrange their hair, or even those who exhibit the content of their mind by showing off knowledge. Because exhibitionism can occur whilst fully clothed, I think that very few people in our society doesn't exhibit themselves to the Other...Simply because, as I explained at the beginning, we live in a society of the image where everybody cares about how the Other looks at you. And I think it is also a natural human behaviour.
It starts to be unnatural and dangerous for the society when people look but don't communicate.
Indeed, this 9th of October, I didn't exhibit myself just to be seen, I didn't create a blog just to be read, but I did all this in the purpose of interacting with YOU public. BACK TO CONTENT

If you want to prostitute yourself, there is the street for this!

This is what one of the men present at the Speakers' Corner that Sunday shouted in the middle of the crowd. I was unfortunately out of words to reply anything to this man. But I still believe that it was better not saying anything. It would have been focussing too much interest on him. But now that I am relaxed, in front of my computer, and that I am thinking about his insulting words, I find something very interesting in them, and that worth spending few minutes on:
Prostitution is an exchange of sex for money. I was not offering sex that day, and I was not asking for money neither. So I am not a prostitute. Ouf... I've had some doubt for a second...
To talk more seriously, I understand what this man wanted to tell me, even if he could have said it in a gentler way...
That Sunday I offered anybody to marry me. Such an unusual thing to ask to in a park, and especially to anybody! A normal married couple is supposed to have sexual relationships. And obviously this man took my proposition in the first degree!
It is true I was deliberately enticing men... and women that day, and was offering them entertainment, but not a sexual one. The only erotic gift I offered them was a kiss... and on the cheek (apart from the 2 or 3 girls who were surprisingly more racy than men!)!!! So call it prostitution if your want, but still, at the end, this kiss was free and not mandatory!
But where I can say that I was doing prostitution in a certain way, is that I was showing myself in spectacle. I was offering my image to complete strangers, in a public place. What is more I am a woman, I was wearing a dress (not that sexy though...) and I was smiling at you... which means I prostitute myself every day then!...
BACK TO CONTENT

What you offered to the spectator is a vulgar peep Show!

EXACTLY!!!!!! Even if I would use 'popular' rather than 'vulgar'.
It is exactly what I offered to the spectator that Sunday, at least in the definition that was given to peepshows when they started to become very popular and considered as street entertainments in the 18th and 19th centuries: 'This invention would carry several names and would be altered as it passed from the hands of artists and scientists to street entertainers, but what emerged was a device that would thrill and entertain people for more than two centuries.' Richard Balzer, Peepshows: A visual History.
What exactly was a peepshow? It was a closed or semi-closed box having at least one viewing hole through which a view is seen.
It was also a democratic attraction: 'The views were for everyone, for those who could read and those who couldn't', and of course a viewing activity: 'the viewer would enjoy the garden not by strolling but by viewing from a single point, creating a carefully considered perspective'.
But most of all, as its title says, a peepshow 'shows'. And what it was originally showing in the past, was a larger more exciting world: 'In an era when individual lives were constrained by time and space, the box suggested escape from the boundaries of daily life' '... expanding their sense of the world': imaginary scenes, fabulous landscapes... So in the past a peepshow was offering a new way of seeing the world in a form of a story and was selling his viewer a dream. Some of them were going so far in the illusion, that they even managed to create a 3 dimensional world, through the use of mirrors and painting on the bottom and sides of the box, forerunning Virtual Reality storytellers. So truth or historical accuracy was not of overwhelming importance to many showmen.'By pulling the strings, the showman creates and manipulates reality and us', like Las Vegas manipulates and 'steals' the money of its gamblers by way of entertainment in the middle of a fantasy word. Besides, some caricatures show peepshowmen taking advantage of what the spectator was totally absorbed by the spectacle, to steal his money in his back.
Today, even if it completely lost its charming aspect, finding an audience through the display of erotic and pornographic images, peepshow still offers his clients an illusory world well beyond one's self. They are watching a naked girl that arouses phantasms in their head through her erotic spectacle, but that they actually never get in reality.

And what I offered to my public on the 9th was an innovative and entertaining way of getting married. The viewers were opening their eyes widely to watch my spectacle and I was opening their mind to a wider definition of marriage. But they actually didn't get married to me 'for real', even if some of them would have liked for divers reasons (Love at first sight maybe... but for European Visa as well!!!)
One difference between these early peepshows and my modern one is that I was performing in an opened space and not a box that normally aims at robbing the viewer of the mystery of entering an inaccessible space and viewing an hidden image. People didn't have to look through a hole to watch me performing, which is one of the main factors that led to a perfect interaction between the audience and me. There was no physical curtain separating us, no 'wall of prohibition', no barrier to trespass, and no window to look through. And this is precisely this absence of separation that made the exchange happen so naturally and loosely.
In the AMAZE ME and the TALKING LIBERTY projects that I both talked about earlier, even if there is an interaction between the medium and the audience, it happens behind a transparent glass. But the interaction is still working perfectly because the role and the space of the voyeur and the exhibitionist are inversed: the exhibitionist, that is to say the passer-by is performing in the public space of the street, and the voyeur, that is to say the camera, is watching from the private space of the booth. What is more this booth is in glass and this transparency contrary to the opaque walls off peepshows’ boxes, erases the border between private and public space, so that the whole space becomes public.
'The peepshow presenter was in a unique situation, offering at the same time an entertainment which was both public and private. His venue was the streets, and he, like any other entertainer, had to work with his voice, musical instruments, and possibly an accompanist, to gather a crowd. This was all very public. However his offering, distinct from most other public entertainments, was private, an individual peek into a dark box'.
Finally, the showman had first to win the attention of the viewer to make him look through the hole. As for me I used my voice... and my charm ;) BACK TO CONTENT

Do you know Sophie Calle?

If I know her? I respect her work so much that I want to dedicate her this whole section of my dissertation:
Even if all my readings and a lot of other artists helped me in my reflection and enriched this project through their thoughts and their own projects, the work of Sophie Calle definitively inspired me, even unconsciously I would say, before my look met her work for the first time, and much more after this. I completely share her artistic ideas. And that's why similarities can be found in both of our works, even if I never intended to copy her.
The last exhibition she did in Paris in the Centre Georges Pompidou was called: 'M'as-tu vu?' (in the sense of 'look at me!'), a title that comments ironically on the ubiquity of the artist's figure in her own method. Indeed the whole exhibition was about her and her life precisely because her work is an extension of her own life, an autobiographic piece to be seen and read, like a narrative in a series of chapters.
That's why her work is often said to have some similarities with the Narrative Art that emerged in the 60's.
So when people say that my own work is narcissist I like to think that I am not the only one to expose myself in my projects. And it is even very glorifying to have your work compared to Sophie Calle's one.
This narrative and exposure thus become the narrative and exposure of the other, in both my work and hers. When she asks blind people to tell her what beauty means for them, I ask people in my Desire project to tell me with their hands, as if they were deaf and dumb, what is their strongest desire, or in Apocalypse I ask some other ones to write me a list of things they would like to do before their death.
Sophie Calle is fascinated by the human race, that's why she makes art about people and accessible to any kind of people. Contrary to these elitist conceptual pieces of work that are only directed to a very limited number of people, Sophie Calle's art is simple and talks about everyday life. It nullifies the distance between the artist and its public and rather invites him to be part of her projects.
She is interested in the interaction between her work and the audience, and my dissertation is about this. She sets the rules of her own interactive game: 'becoming attached to strangers, with the power of becoming detached from them...so that it doesn't hurt.'
She likes to tell stories, and I like it too. She likes to disguise and I enjoy it too. She likes to be told stories by people and my wedding project is a good example of what I like as well. She loves to sneak into people's life and I loved it too when I was doing my 'mail box project'. Sophie didn't do it in the building where she was living but in a Venitian hotel where she was hired as a temporary chambermaid: 'In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me.'
One critic wrote about Sophie Calle: 'She is not only a voyeur who gets on a compulsive prying and spying, but an exhibitionist who must show trophies of her exploits, in the form of photographs and diaristic texts enlisting us as accessories of her perverse transgressions'.
She was used to shadow people in the street (Suite venitienne), and I did it too in my Date project, not by following them in the street, but by waiting with them for the person that they were supposed to meet (and who I didn't know at all), without their knowledge and in a safe distance.
In the last room of this exhibition 'M'as-tu vu ?', the spectator was suddenly surprised to be reflected his own image on the surface of a mirror hung on one of the walls, and with the words 'M'as-tu vu ?' written on it. A clever reference of the 'look back' I talked about earlier on and that I used in a different way in my 8 Cordova project.

'Sophie Calle is among these individuals driven by a desire to live in an exceptional way, and who utterly reject the idea of sacrifice, boredom, and void'.
I don't aim at becoming a second Sophie Calle at all, even if it can sound as if I wanted to. She consciously or not inspired my work, but I never aimed at copying her. I just found interesting to compare her projects with mine since the thematics of the surveillance, voyeurism and exhibitionism are recurrent and definitively ones of the key themes in both my work and hers.
However, she has her personality and I have mine own one that I hope to express clearly through my bodywork. But I still would love to show her my wedding project. She herself used a wedding with one of her ex lovers but that finally never happened, to make a photographic piece where she shows herself in a beautiful red wedding dress.
I could talk about this artist work during hours, but I already feel that you want me to come to the conclusion of this dissertation! So I will stop here. BACK TO CONTENT

What did you learn from this project?

A LOT.
First of all, I learnt how to organise a wedding ceremony within one month while most of the people start to do it one year in advance!
I learnt how to create a blog (which is very easy since some Internet services do everything for you), and how to personalize it (which is a hell if you don't have a minimum of knowledge in HTML language! ... and I didn't.)
I learnt that I should never ever lie to my parents again especially when it is about marriage!
But more seriously I learnt that interactivity is total only when both the artist and the spectator learn something from this exchange like all these interactive pieces in the Science Museum that invite visitors participation in exchange of some knowledge.
As for me, I learnt a lot humanly from the very different responses of the great diversity of people from different backgrounds, countries, cultures, and social scales who interacted with met that day.
I learnt that storyteller is not an easy job, that it is not enough to have something to tell or to show to people. You also have to make people believe in it, enter you world and feel the desire to share it with you.
What is more, getting myself involved in people's life was a very enriching experience. By asking these people to write me stories about them, I was appropriating myself part of their life, I was making their stories mine, and at the end, I was enriching my own story. Indeed, all these people who engaged themselves in my project, also engaged themselves in my life. This 9th of October, 52 strangers entered my story.
This project was also a secret opportunity for me to compare their life to mine. In a sense, these stories reassured me and simplified the meaning I was giving to LOVE and to my own life. These people wrote their stories in few seconds without even thinking of any definitions. Some of them sounded banal, other ones completely crazy. But at the end, what really matters is not what they wrote but the fact that they did it in an instinctive, concise and naively charming way.
We should all learn or exercice ourselves to write our life in 10 seconds, to shrink it into 3 lines. We would certainly be very surprised by how simple our existence actually is, compared to the idea we have of it.
Finally, it has been a real delight to communicate so freely and 'primitively' with others, within such an individualist and normed society that raises barriers between human beings: 'We protect ourselves, we barricade ourselves in. Doors stop and separate. The doors break space in two, splits it, prevents osmosis, imposes a partition. On one side, me and my space, the private, the domestic; on the other side, other people, the world, the public, politics. You can't simply let yourself slide from one into the other, neither in one direction nor in the other. You have to have the password, have to cross the threshold, have to show your credentials, have to communicate, just as the prisoner communicates with the world outside.' Georges perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces.
And finally, when Jean Sartre says: 'The Hell is Others', I want to reply that I DO NEED others to feel alive. It doesn't mean that I exist FOR others' gaze, but THANKS to others' gaze. Your look feeds me, warms over my skin, stimulates my bloodstream, and arouses my senses.
But now I would like to know what YOU learnt from this. If something is missing from this very talkative dissertation, it is certainly this. I still don't know which knowledge I offered to my audience through this project: How to write a Love story? How to never trust a friend who is announcing her wedding at the Speakers' Corner? How to share a wife with 51 other husbands?
I hope I didn't only opened their eyes, but also their mind and their feelings.
One of my husbands told me that this project had the great faculty to open his heart and liberate his feelings. This is the person that wrote me the longest and saddest love story. So maybe what they learnt from this wedding is simply that: how to become writer of their own life, how to become director of their own play, how to make choices and be aware of their active role in the society, how to deny passivity, how to break the rules, how to transgress the rules given by the society, how to make their voice heard... how to feel happy and free.
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