Donny Chou Wu
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Instruction Set for Strangers
The Urban Mannequin project was created with the ambitious task of asking strangers in a public setting to interact with each other. Donny and I decided to create a community story.
We choose to set our project up at the Bedford L train stop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This area has a wide variety of inhabitants but is largely young, artistic youth. We felt this would be a great area to find people who would be willing to participate.
The Setup:
What to write on? There were many choices available to create a canvas, our initial thought was a mannequin. Mannequins are an anomaly in the modern world, they are human in form which draws immediate feelings/thoughts to mind. This we thought was important for drawing attention to the project and for creating thoughtful responses to our prompt. Not many things in the world can draw attention like a naked woman, even if she is made of plaster.
Prototype: The Baby
Before we set the project up we had several questions that needed answering. The main being, how much graffiti should we expect in the public setting? The other questions were; what should the prompt be?, how should we physically set up the piece?, and how much time does the piece need to be in the setting?
We tested some of these ideas with a baby doll set in the Parsons 10th floor lobby.
The baby doll was tied to a coffee table in the lobby for 24 hours, with 1 marker attached to it. This is the result.
We concluded that a naked doll definitely grabs attention and inspires response from creative individuals. The graffiti caused some concern for us and the prompt of 'Dear baby,' on the forehead did not generate any direct response.
The question then became, what kind of prompt will illicit thoughtful responses instead of just graffiti? We knew that there was no way to stop graffiti but minimizing it was our goal for creating the prompt.
Some of our thoughts for a prompt were:
Cloth me with memories
My soul yearns for
The bedford story
I knew a girl who...
We decided on using, 'My Soul Yearns For,' as the prompt and it did create direct responses. We set the mannequin on the street for 6 1/2 hours (with one of us watching it from a nearby restaurant). The time limit of our availability and my concern of leaving it unwatched most definitely left more to be desired from the outcome, although we are happy with the outcome of the Urban Mannequin.
Here are some images of the mannequin once returned from the street.
