SARA SCHNADT
Free art project.
This is a project for testing and disseminating belief.
Free samples of a gold paper fortune teller that is completely blank except
for one inner panel are available for the viewer to take. The fortune
is small (precious) in scale. Only those who take a fortune, and are persistent
with playing the childhood "fortune" game associated with the
object for its own sake discover the prediction hidden inside. The prediction
is almost too optimistic to believe, (your heart's desire, the good life,
etc..) and yet, having suspended belief this far, I tempt the audience
to believe it anyway.
HOW TO LOCATE
At the FREE
MANIFESTA HEADQUARTERS. Each fortune
will be packaged flat in a clear ziplock jeweler's bag. A label on the
front will show a closed, 3D fortune. A shoe-box sized card-board display
case will feature a spokesmodel (myself in eveningwear) offering a velvet
tray of fortunes to the viewer (see enclosed image).
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I am a Chicago-based performance installation
artist. My work is concerned with what people know as fact, as fantasy,
and how the line is drawn in between. I have an MFA from The School of
The Art Institute of Chicago, and I was raised on a new age international
commune in Scotland called Findhorn.
NOTE
2 brief stories about this piece. I have distributed 100 fortunes at Lapland
Gallery, Glasgow (1997), and at Gallery 2 in Chicago (1999). People I
have met months or years afterwards have told me that they saw the piece,
and still kept the fortune, saving it on their mantle or in their favourite
book. I imagine the continued travel of these objects, and the stories
they collect. So far, this piece has been a live performance. At Lapland
Gallery particularly, the audience response was remarkable. This was a
show of multiple artwork. As the only free art in the show, my work was
recieved with enthusiasm. As a performer, I have never experienced such
a breakdown of formality between audience and viewer in a public space.
When given the frame to understand artwork as a gift, an audience can
be very generous themselves.
CONTACT THE ARTIST
