a new ball, and tea in bed

thanks to whoever dried out the pages of the booklet, also there has been a new addition of a rainbow ball beside the bed

livingroom 2

a dinner table on the top of the hill at Sydney park.

Was swiftly taken away by council this morning.

cup of tea?

the rollerblades are gone, but a new tea set has taken their place!

umm?

this morning it appears that the bed has been cordoned off with large council barriers, I’m not sure whether someone thinks the bed is dangerous, or they are trying to stop people from ‘touching the art’

it’s been raining

Just a few more pictures - some kids squirting water onto the bed, and the view of the park…

psychogeographic mapping

I see this project as a sort of psychogeographic mapping of Sydney’s unwanted. Mapping objects of refuse and bringing them together into some sort of iconic ‘landmark*’ tribute to the discarded, rejected, and forgotten.

*note the amount of people who want to be photographed and take photos of the ‘livingroom’ is kind of absurd - everyone who stops whips out a camera phone or pocket camera to document the junk. It’s kind of funny that rearranging trash has that effect on people.

Taking from the situationist concept of psychogeographic mapping - creating maps that are disjointed (cut up, transposed with other cities) in attempt to de-familiarise people with their environment, as well as focusing on the emotional and behavioural effects of space rather than simply mapping out physical highways, blocks, streets, etc.

“Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” (Debord)

It also reminds me of a project I saw recently called ‘Get Lost‘ where a bunch of different artists make maps of New York City in their various ways…

eg. Rirkrit Tiravanija maps the city out in a path of food

William Pope L. maps out the city’s safe house

and Jonas Mekas maps out New York in memories from the sixties, marking out the social spaces of that time

jumping on the bed

these kids were having a good time today jumping on the bed, I think they were actually having a competition to see who could break it, but whatever. They also took away the badminton racket and were having a good time giving everything they could find a good whack on their way home…

the big move!

last night walking through the park, I thought the room must have been taken away because I couldn’t see it under the tree - then I looked around and realised someone has moved it to the middle of the park! It’s set up (almost) exactly the same, even including the picture that was behind the bed on the tree is now on the ground in front of the bed. The monkey has been given a bottle of water, is missing a left eye, but looks generally satisfied with the new position.

tucking in the monkey

Probably the most amazing thing that has been happening, is that someone has actually been visiting the bed each night and tucking the monkey into the blanket placing the kids book in it’s arms.  Then each morning, the monkey gets out of the blankets and sits on the bed. awwww

some new additions

It’s really amazing how people have been adding new stuff to the room, so far, additions have included:

-roller blades in the place of the gum boots

-a new kids book, to add to go with the mr. men book that was already there

-a badminton racket

-a cardboard shield (obviously a donation from the ‘cardboard tube fighting competition’ that brought over a hundred people to the park on saturday!