Workshop for Potential Life
The Absurd Object, Constraint #73 Place a completely incongruous object in every room of your home or office. Wait for someone to notice. Say nothing. Reference artist(s): Marcel Duchamp. The protocol Select one object per room… the incongruity must be…
Tuesday Lunch, Constraint #72 Every Tuesday for a month, have lunch with someone you barely know or don’t know at all. A colleague you’ve crossed paths with, a neighbour, someone you met last week. Reference artist(s): Allan Kaprow. The protocol…
Bob Flanagan was born in 1952 with cystic fibrosis. At the time, children with this disease generally did not survive past adolescence. Flanagan lived to be 43. It was not a medical miracle… it was, according to him, a decision.…
The Inherited Recipe, Constraint #71 Call a parent, a grandparent, an elderly friend. Ask them for a recipe from their childhood. Cook it together or separately, each in your own kitchen, on the phone. Compare. Reference artist(s): Annette Messager. The…
The Historical Contacts, Constraint #70 Change the names of ten contacts in your phone to names of historical figures you admire. Keep them for a week. See if it changes the way you talk to them. Reference artist(s): Sophie Calle.…
In 1974, Joseph Beuys locks himself in a New York gallery for three days with a wild coyote. No audience, no performance in the spectacular sense… just a man, a felt blanket, a cane, copies of the Wall Street Journal…
The Impossible Ringtone, Constraint #69 Replace your phone ringtone with a sound you recorded yourself. Your child’s voice, the rain on your window, your morning coffee. Keep it for a month. Reference artist(s): Merzbow. The protocol Record a sound from…
The Three-Hour Bench, Constraint #68 Choose a public bench. Sit down. Stay for exactly three hours. Observe. Don’t read, don’t look at your phone. Just be there. Reference artist(s): Tehching Hsieh. The protocol Choose a bench in a busy place……
On January 4, 1966, On Kawara paints a canvas. Grey-green background, white letters, rigorous typography: JAN. 4, 1966. Nothing else. No composition, no expressive gesture, no visible signature. Just the day’s date, hand-painted with almost mechanical precision. He stores the…
The Backwards Dinner, Constraint #67 Serve dessert first. Then the starter. The main course last. Nothing else changes. Observe how the order modifies pleasure and conversation. Reference artist(s): Erwin Wurm. The protocol Invite at least one other person. Prepare a…
The Day in Verse, Constraint #66 For an entire day, answer every question in iambic pentameter… ten syllables. No exception. At the supermarket checkout too. Reference artist(s): Georges Perec. The protocol Brush up on iambic pentameter the night before: ten…
In 1979, Sophie Calle follows a stranger in the street. She doesn’t know him. She won’t speak to him. She photographs him from a distance, notes his movements, reconstructs his day. When he disappears into the metro, she loses him……
Eyes Everywhere, Constraint #65 Draw eyes on every round object in your home… stickers, sticky notes, dry-erase markers. Live for a week with this house that watches you. Reference artist(s): Agnès Varda. The protocol Walk around your home. Identify all…
The Noise Kitchen, Constraint #64 Cook using only the sounds produced by utensils and ingredients as a musical score. Nothing else. Record the result. Reference artist(s): Luc Ferrari. The protocol Choose a recipe that involves varied gestures… cutting, beating, boiling,…
In 1965, Roman Opalka begins painting numbers. 1, then 2, then 3… on a black canvas, in white, by hand, with a fine brush. He calls it a “detail”. Each painting is a detail of a single, infinite project that…
The Album in the Dark, Constraint #63 Choose an album you love. Turn everything off. Lie down. Listen to it in full, without interruption, to the last track. Reference artist(s): Nan Goldin. The protocol Choose an album… not a playlist,…
OuViePo’s constraints are not invented ex nihilo. Each one is linked to an actual artistic practice, a documented gesture, a work that showed it was possible. Here are some of the artists who made all of this imaginable. It all…
The Word of the Day, Constraint #62 Pick a random word from a dictionary. Slip it naturally into every conversation throughout the day. Count how many times you succeed. Reference artist(s): Ben Vautier. The protocol In the morning, open a…
The OuViePo generator works like a real digital exquisite corpse: parameters are drawn at random first, then the system finds the matching constraint. A look at the technical architecture.
The Unknown Dish, Constraint #61 Cook a dish you’ve never made. Without help, without consulting a recipe. Just the ingredients, your memory, and your instinct. Eat the result, whatever it turns out to be. Reference artist(s): George Brecht. The protocol…
Why give yourself rules to create? The OuViePo constraint belongs to a long tradition: from Fluxus to George Brecht’s Event Scores, from the exquisite corpse to Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures.
The Posted Letter, Constraint #60 Handwrite a letter to someone who lives less than thirty minutes away. Not a text, not an email. A real letter, in a real envelope, with a real stamp. Mail it. Reference artist(s): On Kawara.…
OuViePo was born from three sentences. The first, by Robert Filliou: “Art is what makes life more interesting than art.” The second, by Joseph Beuys: “Jeder Mensch ist ein Kunstler“, every human being is an artist. The third, from the…
The Silent Meal, Constraint #59 Invite someone to dinner. No phone, no music, no screen. Just the two of you, the food, and silence. See what happens. Reference artist(s): John Cage. The protocol Invite someone… a friend, a partner, a…
Protocol #000 – The Builder’s Constraint Everyone has a constraint here. Yours, perhaps, is to follow a stranger for an hour. Or to photograph only red things for a week. Or to count the days separating you from your death…