Imagine Brown

I went to Brown in March as an “artist in residence” for Interrupt3, a three-day conference on the intersection of art and text and digital things. I was anxious when I arrived because in the days before leaving people had asked me repeatedly what I would make once I got up there. I had no idea.

As soon as I arrived in Providence, I began seeing signs with the words “Imagine Brown” everywhere. They were on lampposts and banners and posters all over Brown’s (quite white — qhite?) campus.

Once at the studios, I stepped outside for a cigarette, hiding from the rain beneath a huge IMAGINE BROWN poster strewn along the whole wall of the arts building. Brown was begging to be imagined and I was there to be imagining.

I gathered everything brown and free that I could find in a fifty-footstep periphery of the studio. I photographed it with David’s fancy DSLR and printed it with the huge printer we were given access to. Brown, Imagined — here:

1 blondie
1 brownie
1 chocolate chocolate chip cookie
1 coffee cup
1 copy of the back of literallydead
1 Gertrude Stein quote from Tender Buttons
1 Helen Mirra/Fred Frith record, “Quail”
1 Klaus
1 necklace
1 notebook that belongs to Michael Anzuoni
1 paper bag
1 pencil sharpener
1 sunglass case
1 trash can
2 boxes
2 leaves
2 packs of RAW rolling papers
2 pairs of glasses, both sun and regular
2 sheets of recycled paper at different stages of wrinkling
3 cigarette butts
3 pieces of cardboard, varying sizes
6 of the wooden sticks you use to stir milk or creamer into coffee
8 rubber bands