I created Reluctant Rabbit on site at the gallery Platform China which is located at the eastern edge of Beijing in 2011, the year of the rabbit. The exhibition was curated by Audio Architecture and was an extension of our previous collaboration, Local Whispers which was installed at the Victoria and Albert museum in London. I chose to depart from working solely with video for this piece as I wished to create an interactive piece that did not rely on any complex computer interface or technology and that would have a resonance in the real world for both myself and it's audience. Bringing several hundred pieces of scrap paper and memorabilia to the far side of the globe to display and possibly exchange with a gallery audience produced a unique excitement in my mind. Usually art objects are seen as precious, to be seen and not touched but with this, I wanted the viewer to feel as much a part of the artwork as I was. Pinned to the wall beside this ersatz rabbit hutch was a notice, inviting anybody to take any piece of the paper attached to the piece, as long at they replaced it with one of their own. My memories and their memories would mix freely in this space for three weeks, sometimes notes were left, sometimes a receipt for a snack or a bus ticket, exactly the sort of thing that I had left there myself. A new act of collecting memories masked by an act of 'letting go' of mine. Perhaps those scraps of paper took those memories, perhaps they never mattered or were never connected to the material or perhaps there is more to be gained by receiving new ones in exchange.
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http://blog.escdotdot.com/2011/07/08/artslant-not-quite-a-roast/#more-1577