Meeting the unknown was a very interesting experience for me. Of course, meeting strangers is part of our everyday life, but the approach of it is very different when it comes to having a real conversation with them. We are use to see strangers all the time but we are very passive about it because we don’t have to engage ourselves into any types of relation.
But when I went to the highline, I knew the approach of meeting strangers would be unusual. It was unusual because it wasn’t just about asking the time randomly in the street but about having a personal conversation with ten persons in a row.
Also the reason why I met strangers was new to me. I wasn’t talking to them because I needed some sort of information but because I wanted to analyze this idea of meeting strangers. I was meeting strangers to meet strangers.
This experience was an evolutionary one.
At first, while I was interviewing people, I was feeling a little awkward and was being really brief; I would be really structured, nearly mathematic asking for their name, where they were from and the reason why they were on the Highline on a so cold day. Once, those questions were asked, I would stop the conversation and leave. By the end of the experience, my behavior was nearly, if not, totally opposite: I was way more open to strangers, talking to them with confidence and enthusiasm, ending up having evolved and natural conversations with them.
But lets describe the experience more precisely.
When I arrived in Chelsea I still didn’t know if I wanted to interview people in galleries or on the highline. I first checked the galleries, which were pretty empty so I decided to go to beginning of the Highline and hold my interviews on my way until the end of it.
I first met Chan who was a Chinese woman coming to New York for the Vacations, she was on the Highline, on this cold day because she wanted to appreciate the view. Trough all my interviews, three questions were necessarily asked: What is your name? Where do you come from? And what motivated you to come to the highline on this very cold day? Why did I ask those questions? Well first, I feel like you need to know the name of someone to establish a connection and a conversation with a person, then I was interested in knowing from how far people were coming from to visit New York and if there were from New York I would directly jump to the other question: what motivated you to come to the highline on this very cold day?
I think that it is something very special about New York that gives you this weird energy to do a lot more than anywhere else. I was also intrigued into seeing the different motivation depending on each individual. Out of ten persons, five purposes came out: Chan and Roberto, a man from Italy, were there for the view, Gabi from Germany and Aline and Daniel from Brazil came because the sun was shining, Yana and Alina from Russia came for the peace that the Highline gives them, Franco and Alessandro two artists came for the Art galleries and Finally Anthony, the only interviewee from New York came to do a Photo-shoot.
When I approached Chan I was really shy, feeling awkward to talk to perfect strangers. I thought interviewing them was disturbing which I felt bad for. Interview after interview, I was feeling way more comfortable. For example the interview of the two artists: Alessandro and Franco lasted around Thirty minutes. I first started to ask them the same questions as the other interviewees but this time the answers were really fluid and developed which led to us having a real conversation. We sat on the bench and talked about his work and it felt really natural and easy.
So, of course, once you get use to interviewing strangers every conversation seems really natural but it also depends on the interviewee and not only on how at ease you feel. Some interviewees, even though they accepted to answer my questions, were in a hurry and didn’t want to take the time to be precise about their answers. On the other hand, interviewees, for example: Anthony felt flattered about being interviewed and so responded really enthusiastically.
This experience was a very interesting one since it was really new to me. Doing this made me realize things that I haven’t thought about before. For example, it is communally thought that talking to someone that you are surrounded by everyday like a classmate is easier than talking to a stranger, well, while doing the experience I realized it was the contrary. I feel more at ease having a real and personal conversation with someone who I have no link with, knowing that I will never see him again than with a classmate that I am closer to but not close enough to speak freely, worrying about what he will be thinking.
Interviewing many people also gave me an insight on how diverse the crowd is in New York and how people can perceive the exact same thing in such a different way.
After this experience We had to explain it in a visual way, so I decided to create four different maps to describe the experience.
This map shows where the interviewee were from.
This one shows where we actually met them.
This map is more abstract but says the reason why all those people were on the Highline on this very cold day.
And Finally this map is a visual interpretation of a picture I took that day. Two of the three interpretations are very objective and literal describing what objects and colors we can see and the third one is more subjective, It is our interpretation of the atmosphere at this moment.
