Saturday report from James of Stan’s Cafe
We love doing this show in Los Angeles because people tend to be so open with their thoughts and feelings. Skeptics march directly up to you why they are skeptical. Often they’ve not understood that we have a good measure of the grains contained in a gram. They realise the show is far more accurate than they had imagined and retreat happily to look at the next bit of the show. Others think the show is great but missing or misrepresenting a key issue. These conversations are usually instructive, sometimes they push us in a interesting directions, sometimes they tell us which bits of the show need clarifying, often the reveal the preconceptions of the visitor, they always seem to end in harmony. Generally the theme is simply, “we love this show, isn’t it amazing” – which we never tire of hearing.
The history of this country makes it great material for the show. In the last two days visitors have been moved to tears thinking back to their relatives, individual grains in the mounds representing people who passed through Ellis Island or who were brought to this continent on British Slave Ships.
Lots of people have been saying they saw the show when it was here last year but that it had gone before they had a chance to send their friends. Now we are here until December 30th they are leaving with fistfuls of cards to distribute to those they think should come “I’m going to hand these out at Church tomorrow, everyone should see this”, “I’m giving this to my son, he’ll come with his girlfriend, they’ll love it”. We hope to see things get busier and busier as the runs go on. Our ambition? We notice that visitors to the Noah’s Ark exhibition have time-limited tickets stuck to their chests… we want things to ramp up to the point where it’s one-out one-in time limited tickets!
James
Tags: art, exhibition, feedback, performance installation, rice, Skirball, Stan's Cafe
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