canal walk

AT YOUR SERVICE

Two months of daily, playful interventions in urban places of Kyoto meant as 'conversation pieces' contributing to the discussion on the social potential of the public sphere. Documented as commented short film (11:04 min.)

In an effort to ignite our streamlined, hyper-functional lives with meaningful encounters, fun and surprise artist-in-service Markuz Wernli Saito offered site-specific intervention services specifically for each day of the week at announced times and locations. Everybody was invited to join unusual, daily one-hour experiences in everyday public places in Kyoto, Japan, for 56 consequent days, rain or shine, between September 11 and November 5, 2006.

http://www.momentarium.org


(( project description ))

What would happen if you took the tea ceremony out of the secluded tea house and on to a busy city street? How about if you walked through a city canal rather than along the pavement? Or stopped crossing a downtown bridge and sat a while instead? Markuz Wernli Saito decided to find out.

For fifty-six consecutive days last year, September through November, rain or shine, Swiss-born photographer and media artist Markuz Wernli Saito carried out one-hour ‘services’ for, and with, the people of Kyoto. Markuz encouraged friends and passers-by to witness and participate – to act, react and interact.

But why be an ‘artist-in-service’? Why set up mobile tea parties, guard trees and share stories by the light of a vending machine? Simple curiosity is one reason. Providing fun surprise to talk about is another. Placing one-yen coins on the raised tactile surface outside subway exits, for example, is also a way of using everyday objects differently, a mild disruption that could help people to see things differently. Urban life can seem like a never-ending, never-changing grind but Markuz believes that there are “many possibilities in public life and places that remain untried”.

For the most part, the services have been received with friendly curiosity or empathy, says Markuz. Informal and formal objections to his (re)use of public space have been few and, along with a pigeon harbouring artistic aspirations, were all part of a learning experience.

As well as sparking immediate responses, there has been worldwide interest in the project. Markuz filmed all the services and they appear as silent video clips on his website (momentarium.org). Some interpret Markuz’s work as a way of slowing down, of connecting and conversing with people in “interesting and unique ways”. For others, the video documentation brings out “the beauty that is already in present life”. One viewer gained hope from the project as it shows one person “changing the world today, tomorrow and the next day”.

With the services completed, Markuz has been making a series of presentations about the conscious experiment. Through the interactive talks he hopes to “contribute to a bigger discussion on what confines the frame and rules of our public lives”.