TRYST

TRYST

 NEWEST PROJECT:  Ongoing July-October, 2010:  River to Creek: A Roving Natural History of North Brooklyn

Continuing the tradition of TRYSTed city tours and gentle public intervention, with a science twist.  Join us!  July 17, August 21, September 11 and October 2 & 3, 2010.

"Our project is nothing more than a seductive, subversive re-statement of the obvious." *

"The city no longer experienced as a scrim of commodities and power, but felt as a field of psychogeography." (Guy Debord)

MAKE THE WORLD YOU IMAGINE

Click here for the TRYST MANIFESTO

TRYST was formed in 2003 by Paul Benney, Clarinda Mac Low and Alejandra Martorell. It is an artistic and social experiment, where interaction with the public and imagination fuse to create an unexpected set of circumstances. In TRYST we seek to point out the commodified structures of modern existence in a performance form that is simultaneously
accessible and challenging. Through subtle alterations of everyday street life, we can begin the process of questioning our surroundings, and the definitions of “freedom” that we’re given by government and society. In 2003, the pilot project of TRYST included five events: a walking trio with red umbrellas in Washington Square Park; an exploration of Fifth St. at night, with flashlights; an “activated street” with Assisted Street Crossing (ASC) and tap dancing lessons; a tour of the Harlem Meer in Central Park, led by business suits rediscovering a natural state; and a “dérive” or silent walk through Chinatown.

TRYST was part of LMCC’s Sitelines series in 2004 and 2007, the latter in collaboration with Siberia-based Systems of Units, a multidisciplinary performance group also focused on public space performances and alterations. TRYST’s 2004 Sitelines project included: a Business Herd, where performers costumed as Wall St. workers traveled from the Stone St. Historic District to Chase Manhattan Plaza, using the surroundings as a “natural habitat”; 60 Wall Street Atrium, an imagined wildlife tour inside this privately-owned public space; and “Assisted Street Crossing” (ASC), where passersby were offered a lift across the street. The more recent Security Zone (2007) occupied the park in front of the Police Museum on 100 Old Slip for two weeks creating a durational, site-specific engagement with the space and its visitors, neighbors, maintenance workers, vendors, tourists and guests. Our most ambitious project to date, Sign Language, took place in 2009. In it TRYST, collaborated with 14 fifth graders from PS 124 in Chinatown and 5 shop-owners from Doyers St. to devise temporary new signs designed by the children for the hair salons of Doyers St.

Other engagements have included: Afternoon Delight, as part of the Movement Research Festival; multiple
reenactments of ASC; and two preliminary experiments of Line Theory, one as part of Transit, at chashama @ 37th St. in 2005, and another as part of the DUMBO Arts Festival in 2006.

We are particularly interested in how people live physically day-to-day, and what is considered “acceptable” physical behavior. We also want our work to be physically and financially accessible to a wide audience. We want to make a situation that is entertaining and engaging, but where the real experience is left up to the individual audience member's choice and whim. By engaging these decision-making organs, and creating something out of the ordinary in the public realm, we hope to wake up the people who encounter us by chance or by choice

*(Greil Marcus Lipstick Traces)

“Daydreaming subverts the world" (Raoul Vaneigem)

"Situations = moments of life concretely, freely and deliberately
created...each situation...an ambient milieu for a game of events."
(Guy Debord)

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Our latest project was:

Sign Language (click for a full project description)

Check out this video
from the Chinese-language station New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV). Much of
it is interviews in English, with nice footage of the signs.

May 8-18, 2009. On Doyers Street between Pell St. and Bowery in Manhattan's Chinatown. 

Made by TRYST in collaboration with workshop participants from the CPC after-school program, PS 124: Becky Chan, Jia Wen Chen, Natalie Chen, Jacquelyn Kan, Cody Fung, Amy Li, Kelly Tan, Michael Tse, Alice Vo, Connie Wu, Crystal Wu, Michelle Wu, Bonnie Yu, Bonnie Zeng, with store owers from 10, 15, 15-17 and 17 Doyers Street and Nadia Coen.

Translator and Community Liaison: Mee Mee Chin
Production Manager: Holly Ko
Workshop Assistants: Lydia Bell and Kily Wong
Documentation: Arturo Vidich

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