What did you bring me?

Jessica Findley

This DIY gift bearing and receiving suitcase lets you leave a gift, make a gift or take a gift. Art supplies, gifts and gift contents are included, but anyone is welcome to add to or take from the suitcase.

Free Samples

Sarah Kaiser

My suitcase was inspired by the pharmaceutical industry. I recall the day when my psychiatrist gave me some free samples of some SSRIs (Serotonin Selective Re-uptake Inhibitors) such as Paxil and Lamictal. Aside from side effects such as fatigue, weight loss, and minor electric zaps, they have been really great. (I hope that you can sense my sarcasm!) However, now that I'm hooked and don't have insurance, they are quite expensive. Would you like a free sample? (The samples I'll be handing out are only sugar pills, commonly known as "Smarties.")

Maldonado-Salcedo Baggage

Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo a.k.a “MalSal”


There is an inextricable relationship between guilt and migration. The sociopolitical implications intrinsic to the unpacking of this guilt becomes manifested and complicated within familial relationships. Within the volatile theater of being "here" but performing "over there," an enduring liminal identity and space is mapped. Displacement (social, political, spiritual, economic, physical and psychological) becomes generational, until becoming borderline criminal. Maldonado-Salcedo embodies the impossible truth and reconciliation attached to an exodus.

Left Luggage

Material Exchange
Left Luggage

For its proposed contribution to Pathogeographies, Material Exchange offers not an artwork, object, or display—but a service. Material Exchange’s baggage check will be a functioning facility within the space, operating without any intervention from, or dependence upon, the established structures of the gallery. It is our interest to provide an element to the Pathogeopraphies project that will contribute to the organization of a varying and diverse array of contributions (left luggage).

Vietnamese Suitcase

Erin O'Brien

A Vietnamese suitcase is a cardboard box. The “suitcase” serves a temporary purpose, unlike the somewhat indestructible western version, made for on-going travel. As I position myself at locations around various cities (federal building, Vietnamese neighborhood and Vietnam memorial), I solicit people to write/reflect on what they think of Vietnam on Joss paper and put the paper in my “suitcase”. After sharing the thoughts/reflections on Vietnam that people record/write onto the Joss Paper, I will burn them on a lunar holiday.

http://www.erinobrien.org

Los Angeles performance: March 2, 2007
Chicago Performance: April 28, 2007
Seattle Performance: Late May, 2007
Washington DC Preformance: Late May, 2007
Burning of Joss Paper
Final performance Chicago: First Lunar Moon in August

Carried Baggage

Jennifer Hines

I am interested in the idea of the figurative baggage we carry with us when we leave home. Our "suitcase" can carry physical items, but also sentimental, emotional, and psychological items as well. I would like to collect responses from passerby in various places in Chicago and ask what they feel they always carry with them when they travel away from home. The responses will be written by the passerby on a piece of paper, then collected in a vintage suitcase. After collecting the responses, the suitcase will be available for others to read the reponses, thereby allowing people the opportunity to glimpse how others feel, creating a more intimate connection between people.

Data collection occurs on Memorial Day weekend, May 26-28

Singing Melancholia

Megan Ransmeier

You say: I feel like there is no hope.
We sing: I feel like there is no hope,
IIIIIIIII feel liiiiiiiike there is noooooo hoope.
I feeeeeel liiiiiike theeeeeeere iiiiiiiiiis
nooooooo hooooope. Ifeellikehereisnohope.
You: Make sound on our arms with whatever you have.
We: Make sound on eachothers arms with whatever we have.

This group activation of object, phrase, and each other will be taking place in multiple public spaces and invites all who are interested.

First public version of project occurred April 14th at 2pm at the Water Tower in downtown Chicago.
Tentative future dates: April 28th and May 12th

Re-Dressing New Orleans

Carole Frances Lung

After my most recent stay in post-Katrina New Orleans, I realized a tool for rebuilding everyday life in the city of New Orleans is commemorating the loss. With this in mind I will implement the portable garment reconstruction unit (a bike powered portable sewing machine) and ride from FEMA trailer to FEMA trailer in Gentilly neighborhood, asking residents to describe a lost garment, then I will rebuild the garment and leave it with them. The artifacts of the project: portable garment reconstruction unit, fabric remnants, patterns and suitcase with blue tarp reproductions of the garments will available for engagement during the exhibition.

The project takes place May 15-June 13, New Orleans, LA in the Gentilly neighborhood/8th ward.

CrossPollinNation

Andi Sutton

In CrossPollinNation, I will conduct two city walks, from 6 - 10 miles, one in Boston and one in Chicago, both reflecting the race and class changes of the city neighborhoods that the routes pass through. I will carry 2 suitcases filled with heirloom squash seeds and planting materials (squash are notorious for their cross-pollinating tendencies.) When someone on the street offers to help me carry the suitcases, I will plant a squash seed for her/him to cultivate. The suitcases will lighten as more people offer to help. Both walks end when I reach a cultivation site where people I encounter along the way will be able to plant and tend to their seeds together for the rest of the growing season.

Boston dates: Sunday, May 20th, starting at 11AM in Harvard Sq., Cambridge and ending whenever I reach the end of the bus route in Dudley Square, Roxbury.

Chicago dates: ca. June 21-25

URL: http://www.bittermelon.org
(The National Bitter Melon Council)

Operation Red Tape

Dustin McGahan

Dustin McGahan explores overtones of frustration, antipathy, and ambivalence within American social attitudes through the construction of a futile devices. The "Red Tape Machine", a symbol of the average attitude toward large corporate and governmental systems, seeks to remind us of our distaste for obfuscation, complexity and inefficiency by warning you of impending "BUREAUHAZARD".

Timed Change

Matthew Slaats

Timed Change is a game about making small differences. Participants are asked to go out in the city and make a positive change to their environment. This is timed using a stop watch and documented using a polaroid camera. After returning to the gallery, you will write your name, the change and time on the photo before placing it in the suitcase. The fastest time and best change will be the winner. I bet that I can beat you? http://www.matthewslaats.com

Psychological Prosthetics

Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman

Psychological Prosthetics provides a range of services to discretely handle your emotional baggage in political times. From our 30 second Rant Recorder™ and instant PP Band-aid relief™, to our custom designed suitcases, we explore relationships between emotional health, happiness, consumption and the political state.

Join our team, design your own suitcase & take street surveys.
Each trainee gets a free ‘start up' pack!
To check out our website:
http://www.psychologicalprosthetics.com

Security Devices

Sara Dierck

Tools provide safety and a feeling of well-being. Sara Dierck creates interactive sculptures in the shape of tools, specifically concerning fear and security. Sara gives spectators the chance to use the objects she makes, and, as part of Left Luggage, the opportunity to take some home. http://saradierck.com

Carrier

Paul Hazelton
Carrier

A transparent suitcase containing shadowy objects of dust, how one might expect to see a suitcase through an x-ray security screening system at the airport. It’s as though the x-rays, leaving only the coatings of dust, had completely disintegrated the actual objects. With the ever-increasing invasiveness of technology, you wonder from where the threat will come.

Transit Camouflage

Gretchen Vitamvas

Gallery visitors will be able to check out briefcases containing L Wear: coveralls printed with a graphic camouflage design inspired by the interior of L train cars and also military camouflage. Participants will simply ride the train and “blend in” to the car’s confined space –the suit a visual representation of a desire for security, both physical and emotional. The literal blending of the L Wear suit, and also its stand-out oddity are meant to encourage the captive audience to consider their own personal presentation, the uniforms they wear to blend in and be accepted, and how they read others based on appearance. visit subwearnyc.com

Travel Case for Lost Maples

Mark Schatz

In an otherwise dry and rocky region in Texas there exists an isolated forest of Maple Trees surviving in a moist micro-climate. Mark Schatz, a midwesterner now living in Texas, too, is meticulously crafting custom travel cases for these trees to raise the idea of displacement and the connections felt between individuals and regional landscapes.

www.markandheather.com
www.UnorganizedTerritories.blogspot.com