{"id":11250,"date":"2015-11-11T00:06:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T00:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/faq-what-does-artisfear-mean\/"},"modified":"2015-11-11T00:06:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-11T00:06:59","slug":"faq-what-does-artisfear-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/faq-what-does-artisfear-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"FAQ: What does Artisfear mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

artisfear<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Six years ago, Arlington Cultural Affairs held a contest to
\nname an arts institution they planned to open in the former Newseum space in
\nRosslyn. They offered three options on which the public could vote. I helped
\npromote the contest by posting it on social media. I recall many smarty-pants
\nfriends making disparagingly clever comments about the proposed choices. My
\nfavorite comment was written by my good friend Gareth, who suggested we call
\nthe space Art Is Fear, wordplay on the winning moniker, Artisphere. Genius! I
\nimmediately purchased the URL.<\/p>\n

Two years later, an artist named Agnes Bolt proposed a
\nperformance art installation that entailed her living inside a small enclosure
\ninside my apartment for one week. She explained that she would observe my
\nbehavior as an art collector, gathering data for a public gallery exhibition
\nlater that year. I agreed to participate in what seemed like a peaceful
\nco-existence that would not interfere much with my routine.<\/p>\n

On the appointed move-in day, Agnes arrived in a moving truck that contained large sheets of clear hard plastic that she assembled into a bubble structure that filled up
\nmy entire apartment. She attached 15\u2019 expandable dog tunnels to either end of
\nthe bubble. She crawled through a tunnel from one end to the bathroom when she needed to
\nrelieve herself. She creeped through a tunnel attached to the other send in the middle of the night to observe me
\nin my sleep.<\/p>\n

On the first day, she presented me with a contract that required greeting her each morning with
\na kiss, communicating with her only via a tiny tube through which I would
\ndeposit handwritten messages on tiny pieces of paper, and performing various
\ntasks at her discretion. A continuously running video camera captured every
\nmoment. Her photographer documented the experience with still images and slept on the couch.<\/p>\n

Other than to shower in my bathroom whenever I was away from
\nthe apartment, I never saw her leave the bubble until Day 4 when we clashed
\nover a revenge prank that went too far. Emotionally exhausted from the
\nexperiment, I slammed my bedroom door and ignored her text message apologies. She and
\nher photographer friend left my house and roamed the streets for an hour
\nbefore I\u2019d calmed down enough to invite them back. We settled on an uneasy
\ntruce. When she moved out at the end of the week, we both cried with relief and
\nsadness over our failure.<\/p>\n

Before Agnes moved in, I hadn\u2019t planned on blogging about
\nthe experience. Once I fully comprehended how far she had expanded the scope of
\nmy original expectation, I had a hunch things would get weird. I knew I would
\nneed a way to deal with the discomfort and distress her performance would cause.
\nCalling that blog Artisfear seemed obvious.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

artisfear: Six years ago, Arlington Cultural Affairs held a contest to name an arts institution they planned to open in the former Newseum space in Rosslyn. They offered three options on which the public could vote. I helped promote the contest by posting it on social media. I recall many smarty-pants friends making disparagingly clever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[101,394,393,396,392,395],"class_list":["post-11250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-art","tag-cohabitation","tag-intervention","tag-participant-observation","tag-performance","tag-relation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-2Vs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}