So Sarah, I can't help but notice that we are across
the street from an Arby's.
We are, indeed.
It's an unlikely place for contemporary art.
Yeah, I always imagined that we were
going to be at fancy galleries and stuff for this.
Well, we're actually at a former tire dealership
in the Lafayette Square Mall area of Indianapolis, Indiana.
And today we're at this service center,
which is a community center, a gallery, a library, a meeting
place, lots of things.
JOHN GREEN: Is also-- they have chickens!
SARAH URIST GREEN: They do!
They have chickens and murals.
So why are we here on this freezing, windy,
hair-unfriendly day?
Yes, we're here to meet with Jim Walker,
the executive director of Big Car, the organization that
runs this space, and also to meet
with Florian Riviere, who's their artist in residence.
He's French, but he lives and works all over the world.
All right, let's go meet him.
Let's do it!
Hi, I'm Florian.
And I'm Jim.
This is our art assignment.
I'm Jim Walker.
I'm an Indianapolis based artist who works with people.
And I'm part of Big Car Collective.
And we're based here in this service center
location in Indianapolis.
We really felt like in this bleak parking lot world
that if you had something colorful and creative
and non-commercial that it would really help
transform this neighborhood.
So having a surprise that's for you
is really what it's about and also a place where
people can come and really have a good time and get together.
And things like that can happen.
My name is Florian Riviere.
I'm French, a French urban hacker,
which means to append and connect the city, not using
technology but just my body, my sense and play with my world.
So that's my story.
SARAH URIST GREEN: Florian calls himself an urban hacker.
And by this he means he works with public space and city
streets as his raw material, rethinking things
we tend to take for granted, like park benches, grocery
carts, and skateboards.
His past impromptu interventions include
dropping his cell phone into a traffic cone
to create an improvised speaker, making an orange juicer out
of a fence post, creating a hurdling course out of traffic
barriers, and turning a gumball machine into a mini Foosball
game.
I work alone all the time.
I like to do that.
I just meet some people who get out of the car
just for a second to go into the supermarket.
People are so much in a box, in a car, in the television,
in the office, in a bar.
It's all the time.
And to be outside, it's great for your inspiration.
So the big question is can you create
a new interaction, which allows people to get out of the box.
And it's a big challenge.
JIM WALKER: So your art assignment
is to go to our website, play what, how, where,
and share the results.
And think to make your own rules.
So what's really great about this assignment
is that the decision making process
has been completely removed.
And all you have to do is go to this website, click a button,
and it tells you exactly what to do.
JOHN GREEN: Yeah, it's not like having
to figure out what's intimate and indispensable to you
to make a GIF.
SARAH URIST GREEN: Right, I mean there
is some creativity involved in how you execute the command.
But it's said there, right for you.
Yeah, I have to say though, Sarah,
that I've always felt like art making involves intention.
Like the artist intentionally making
choices about which lines to draw where.
Well chance has always been involved in art making process.
But artists for a while have sort of intentionally
brought that chance into the work.
All right, like when?
SARAH URIST GREEN: I'll show you.
This project stems from the Surrealist tradition,
not the "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" or "Melting Clocks"
kind of surrealism, but its origins in the 19 teens
and '20s as a literary movement, founded by French poet Andre
Breton.
Breton and his friends experimented with automatism,
or spontaneous writing techniques,
and played a poetry game, in which each participant writes
a word or phrase on a piece of paper,
folds it to hide what they've written,
and passes it on to others to do the same.
They called the game Exquisite Corpse,
after a line created using the process.
A drawing game also developed, wherein a piece of paper
is folded into segments, and each player
draws sections of the body, without seeing
what others have done.
Many artists have used this technique,
resulting in fantastical, distorted figures.
Jim and Florian's game is a derivation of Exquisite Corpse.
But it also reflects a newer strain of art
that is socially engaged, participatory,
and made outside of studios and museums.
These games ask interesting questions,
like what can bring unlikely people together
to do unlikely things and result in unlikely discoveries?
And can chance be corralled into useful or beautiful
constructions?
I know that you like to play a game on a computer
or any kind of technology.
But I tried to make that game with Jim
to help people to be connected on reality.
Because for us, it's the place where there
is infinite possibilities.
And I know that you're looking for freedom and intent
on your game.
Like Minecraft, oh you can make so much stuff.
But here for me, the roll is my playground.
And by connecting action with object and space--
what or where-- is to push you to be connected
and to play in a museum, on a bench, in a supermarket,
everywhere, just to have fun.
JIM WALKER: So all you really do,
you would pick a card randomly out of this--
you'd get them all together, and then you'd divide them out,
so they're in these three colors.
Separate by what, how, and where.
That's the order they need to go in.
And then this would be the first part of the instructions
phrase.
So then you draw the next one, and that tells you
how to do that.
So pretend to be a bird is what you're doing.
How to do it is in slow motion.
And then you turn over where, for where
you're going to pretend to be a bird in slow motion.
You're going to pretend to be a bird in slow motion on a chair.
Which I think Florian would probably do for us right now,
right?
Yeah.
So there is no sense to the game.
There is no sense, but that's the idea,
to not make full sense, just to lose control.
And there is no goal, it's not a competition.
You're just doing something you never thought to do.
So here we are, back at the office.
Since you guys won't have the cards,
we're going to check out the website and see how it works.
[CROWD MURMURING]
I'm calling because I'm making a phone call how
I don't like in a cafe, which is very loud
and obnoxious for everyone else here.
MAN 1: Draw a circle in the water with something
I found, namely this stick.
I didn't fall in.
MAN 2: Hi, how's it going?
Did you pick up a lot about here?
[POP]
For me, the world is my playground.
And I don't want even a playground.
I want just the world.
I'm almost against playgrounds.
I prefer to denounce playgrounds and to say,
let's play everywhere.