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Falling On Ice - An Interdependency Experiment II

2019
street performance  

On a dark cold icy winter night, I saw my alcoholic neighbor fall in the parking lot. Cars passed by, but no one came to help, he was an alcoholic after all. I finished my cigarette and came to his aid from the 5th floor. He was big, but we managed to get him up and get all his beer cans from the floor, and I got him home to a warmer space where he could continue drinking. The next morning, on my way to work, a mother in a wheelchair fell over whilst her child was on her lap. I helped them up. A few hours later, on my way back home, I was running to catch the metro and fell on the ice myself. After feeling firsthand the shame of needing someone's help passed I thought to myself: It doesn’t matter how well-positioned we are in life, we all become vulnerable to society's support when we fall.  On the floor, there is no welfare that will get us up, we are weak, and our wish is no other than to stand up tall. What happens when we cannot? Interested in exercises of interdependence and collective creation, I decided to fall on purpose to see what would happen.

 

No great endeavor was achieved by one human alone. The fallen and the standing can benefit and care for one another, if one allows for vulnerability and the other for kindness.

Multiple urban locations -  2019 / Helsinki, Finland

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