Bridge 3 was a group project made by three 3 members and the theme was multiple perspectives by conducting a socially engaged art performance. We had to displace an everyday action or object and shift its common use and context. The scenario created by this shift in meaning and placement would be the ultimate factor to cause interesting social interactions between the performers or objects among the viewers. The object we chose was “fish” and our action was “Death”. Our idea was to showcase the death of a fish, by this, we would be showing the public our mourning to something as insignificant as a fish is. We wanted to give the fish a chance of people feeling sad about its death by being silent. People mourning a fish is not usual, it is our way to be sorry for all the damage we’ve done to their ecosystem and their lives. Finally, we also wanted to show hypocrisy, how people don’t stop and think about how the fish was killed or how it got to the supermarket, we take this all for granted. Having this idea in mind, we also wanted to show our hypocrisy by buying the fish and then mourning it, like killing something and then feeling sorry about it. Even though our project had many layers and purposes that varied between the members, we always kept in mind our purpose and goal.
We knew that the process and the reactions of the people would be incredibly unpredictable, not only because we would be morning a fish but because we chose to do it in an elevator. The purpose of the location was to force people to face the fish, symbolically if they turn around away from the fish, would mean that they are avoiding reality, even if they have it in front of their eyes. The encapsulated space of the elevator helped encapsulate the smell of the fish, therefore even if some people decide to turn away they wouldn’t be able to escape the smell. Kerry hall’s elevator was perfect because it had good illumination and the background had a gloomy purple tone which combined with our black and formal attire. The funeral atmosphere was achieved by playing melancholic music and by our extreme seriousness while mourning the fish. Even if people tried to engage with us we remained speechless, really embodying the funeral like atmosphere. From my perspective, the outcome and the process of recording it was successful, as I expected, people’s reactions differ; some laughed, looked concerned, took pictures, stood confused and even changed elevators, the most frequent reaction was avoidance. While Chichi took photos from different angles, yumi and I were the ones holding the fish, staring at it and avoiding conversation, we focused on capturing sadness in our facial expression. Yumi and I usually stood on places where you couldn’t see while facing front the elevator, this is because people wouldn’t have entered the elevator if they saw us carrying a dead fish. As different people entered the elevator, we were destined to go to whatever floor they chose which also symbolizes how the fish even at its funeral has no say nor freedom.
My role in my group was to be the motivator, make the group closer, resolve any type of inconvenience, and provide enjoyable ideas. Chichi was the one in charge of recruiting all elements needed to shoot the photos and Yumi focused on studying the unpredictable reactions or situations that could happen while performing. I think all three of us assumed our role easily as it connected also to our personality traits. I was excited to perform so it wasn’t difficult to transmit that to my group, from the start we didn’t encounter problems, we all understood and listen to each other. The factor that united us was that we all had unique reasons why we wanted to perform this, we all have developed interesting issues we wanted to showcase by our display. Even though the funeral of a fish is stupid we agree that for us it had personal meaning, a purpose we all shared but had different roots. Personally for me, it was representing the lack of attention and consciousness we put on fishes, some eat them and some don’t but no one really cares about them, I’m not saying its crucial to think about animals and how we affect their environment every day but I used this experience to really think about what humans have done to them, focusing on that made it easy not to laugh on the elevator. One challenge we face was the increasing smell of the fish, at first, we could stand the smell but it got really bad when we were about to enter the elevator and start our project, therefore we put garlic all over the fish help with the smell as is suppose to diminish it. It worked at first but as time went by the smell on the elevator got serious, funny enough we didn’t notice as we didn’t move from the elevator for hours yet people entering the elevator certainly noticed how irresistible the smell was, personally I found this part of our project really interesting as not only seeing the fish shocked them, we achieved to trigger different senses of them such as smell which made our process and the experience overall more prevalent on them.
