more of brooklyn floats in chicago

...late night walk in humboldt park, probably around midnight...tied more of maya's particles to bare trees in the big park...after a warm (er) day with sunshine, the night was cold and windy. i also saw families of duck and geese, quacking, spying, living pretty in the pond. rats and rabbits hopped around in the darkness as well.

particles disappear into ethos

late tonight i am walking back to the apartment from my car parked around the corner on rockwell, in ukrainian village. i stop to notice that maya's particle monologues are still floating on tree limbs. i smile. i step closer to read the text -- and realize that the text has already faded away into the universe. the two other tags tied two trees down -- same thing. her particles are truly faded into the air, and we all breathe in her universal "you."

towards a participatory poetics

"My interest personally is always in the "rub" between "self" and "other," outside/inside, male/female, and how words can play with those dualities, creating sparks in the very clash and mesh of the phones and phonemes. And how, too, the mouthing of the words, the vocalization, can generate energy that stirs people out of mesmerization. I'm interested in a participatory poetics, a transformative poetics."

Poet Anne Waldman -- Whole Earth Review, 1988

elementary particles

If an elementary particle truly has no substructure, then it is one of the basic building blocks of the universe from which all other particles are made.

Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called high energy physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as is done in particle accelerators. Research in this area has produced a long list of particles.

Strictly speaking, the term particle is a misnomer because the dynamics of particle physics are governed by quantum mechanics. As such, they exhibit wave-particle duality, displaying particle-like behavior under certain experimental conditions and wave-like behavior in others.

brooklyn particles floating on iowa street, ukrainian village, chicago

maya's brooklyn particles arrive in chicago!

preparing particles for belize

jungle particle monologues

a message from magical lindsay in the jungles of central america:

"Manders. I am having an AMAZING time. A boy named Louis took my mother and I into the jungle on horseback for 6 hours to a mayan temple. He was the most beautiful boy I have ever seen and met. His soul was shine bright love kindness....

I tied your message to a cohune palm outside of a Mayan temple. I got lost in the jungle yesterday and it was scary. I saw monkeys that guided me.

i love you"

new school tagging -- oakland, ca

new particle monologues float in the bay area/oakland, california march 13-17, 2008 thanks to rachel mcintire (all photos by rachel)

nyc particle monologues

particle monologues
floating through the west village in nyc -- tied sometime between march 9-march 10, 2008.

description of project

in this multi-city conversation, breakarts artists rachel mcintire, maya erdelyi-perez, robert mauksch, and amanda leigh lichtenstein, along with collaborative artists-friends and students, write poetic snippets addressed to a "universal you" on tags with string. we give these snippets to each other via post, and then tie each other's snippets in spots throughout our respective cities -- chicago, oakland, nyc -- to lamp posts, bicycle handlebars, street lights, fences, and tree limbs.

the project is based on rachel's theory of "particle monologues" -- the notion that each of us carries and rehearses the lost fragments of conversation addressed to a particular "you" -- when that person leaves, dies, disappears, we are still left speaking to that person -- addressing unrequited, undiscovered, unrevealed messages from within. here, in this project, we get to expose, expunge, exalt the voice inside each of us that speaks to another.

a glimpse into what's floating around nyc:

"quitting is courageous."

"listen to your last voice message 3 times. memorize it and perform it."

"just say yes"

a glimpse into what's floating around oakland:

"stand closer. lean louder."

" you smell a bit like yesterday."

"call your mother. call her back from the dead."

"tomorrow night, wander through a tunnel of sound."