Berlin Sticker Action

Upon accepting the invitation to take part in the multi-site exhibition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres' "Untitled" (Fortune Cookie Corner), I figured that the real challenge as a participant would be making my own staging of the work publicly accessible. With that in mind, I devised a sticker action as a way to place the work in the public sphere through digital means.

The stickers I designed posed a simple question – "would you take one?" – and refer to a website I created specifically for this action. I printed a total of 750 stickers. Once these were ready I spent several days riding my bike across Berlin, pasting them on every imaginable surface. I covered each one of the city's 13 districts – from Reinickendorf to Treptow-Köpenick, from Marzahn to Spandau, from Pankow to Steglitz-Zehlendorf. It was up to the passerby coming across one of these stickers to decide whether or not to visit the website to find out more. If they did, they could read a brief description of the project, available in German, English and Spanish. And most importantly, they could ask me to grab a cookie on their behalf, crack it open and send back a picture of their fortune.

Over the course of the exhibition, I received several dozen requests – each one in the form of an email address. In most cases, I didn’t know who the person was, what they do, where they live, or where they saw a sticker. I simply grabbed a cookie for them and sent back their fortune, as promised. No questions asked. Nothing else needed. Someone made a choice and I fulfilled a duty. Distant places were bridged. Public and private briefly overlapped. Action took place. And thus, I hope, the generous spirit of Gonzalez-Torres’ work was actualized.