When the World is Sick

a folkLAB experiment created for "How Well?" a curated project for Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Arts in Social Distancing

On the week of May 1st, 2020 four artists of diverse backgrounds and disciplines participated in a virtual, anonymous, exquisite corpse.

Each artist was... 

  • assigned a medium to work in from a list of their top 3 preferred mediums.

  • given up to 24 hours to complete their artwork. as long as the work took place in one 24-hour period, they could spend as much or as little time on it as they liked.

  • allowed to use or incorporate the prompt (in the case of the first artist) or the previous artists’ work as much or as little as they saw fit.

  • asked to consider their capacity, compensation ($100), and general well-being when approaching their art-making process.

The first artist was given a prompt. The following artist received the previous artists work as their prompt.

Here are the art-works in the order that they were created:

  1. a poetic essay—by Rachel Greene

  2. Between Two Worlds: a fairytale—by Nicole Gallagher

  3. "Élégie for Bowel Destruction" soundscape in three movements (1) Forgiveness, Never (2) Destruction of the Bowel (3) Prince of Bowel—by 7D

  4. Élégie for Bowel Destruction, Pt. 2 (improvised music)by Samira Mendoza

On May 20th, 2020 all the artists came together remotely on Zoom—facilitated by curator and folkLAB founder Abigail Lis-Perlis— to meet, reveal their art-works to each other, and discuss the process. (Video, 1 hour and 49 minutes)