What Next?

I had the serendipitous pleasure of taking part in Tino Segal's "This Progress" at the Guggenheim this past winter just as I was starting the Petition Box Project. Fortunately, I was unaware of the work before walking into the museum. It was an exciting interaction and in a way, affirmation that there is value in the art of engagement. For those who are not familiar with Segal's work, here is a brief excerpt from a paper I'd written in Feb 2010:

I was greeted as I started up the rotunda ramp of the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, by an eight year old looking boy named Eric. He stepped right in front of me, hands behind his back, head cocked and looking me straight in the eyes said, “Can I ask you a question?” How could I resist?

“Is progress a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked. I had to do a double take and a question of my own popped into my head unspoken, “What kind of eight year old asks a question like that?” I responded, that it depended upon how we define progress, to which he asked how I defined it. I was again stunned at the level of engagement from such a young museum ‘goer’.

As we made our way up the ramp, Eric peeled off and a teenage boy picked up the conversation where we left off. The realization that this was not an ordinary museum “goer”, but possibly part of something bigger dawned on me as we proceeded up the ramp, continuing a more indepth conversation about progress. Before we finished, the young man was replaced by a middle-aged woman who also picked the threads about progress and we continued upward. The questions and conversation became more complex and the issue of progress was becoming both positive and negative, sometimes waffling back and forth within the same thought. Finally an older man named Bob tied up the last of the conversation before walking away, his final words were a credit to the artist, Tino Sehgal and his piece, "This Progress". 


I was invigorated and excited about this new type of aesthetic experience.