WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE
Medium: Conversations / Participatory Performance
Year: 2022 (on-going)
In this on-going conversation piece, Mel Chan starts with the question: ‘if tomorrow is the end of the world. What is your plan for today?’
Through conversations, the artist, without agenda or presumption, and by using deep listening skill, guides the participants to reflect upon death, in juxtaposition to their mode of existence.
The conversation consists of two parts. First, participants are encouraged to think and talk about “the end” in a geological sense (the end of the world), collective sense (extinction) and in an individual sense (death): how do we come here? Where are we going? In the second part of the conversation, the artist guides the participant to draw up an itinerary of ‘what should be done on the last day before the end of the world’.
In 2022, this conversation piece performed twice in public: in This Art Fair and Kaapstad Tilburg: Art in Public Space Festival. In these set-ups, participants were invited on the spot for a conversation session (10 to 15 minutes each). They were then invited to write a short note (schedule of the last day before the end) and post it on the wall. Participants can interact with each other by reading each others’ posts. It opens up conversations to passers-by, sometimes among themselves.
Other on-going conversations take place in a one-to-one set up in a private setting (meeting at a cafe/home-visit). They are usually more in-depth and take a few hours or up to a few days. Phase II of the project includes actualizing the 'last day' together according to participant's plan -- an ultimate 'rehearsal' of 'the living'
Participatory performance at Kaapstad: Public Art Festival, Tilburg, 2022.