FP: Any project that relies on audience participation forces you to surrender a bit of your artistic control over the end product. Do you have any preconceived notions about how LA audiences will react to your work? Do you think it will go over as well in other cities? How did you go about choosing where the dispensers would be located?
AS: I do not have specific expectations, though I am just very curious about the momentum of our intended interventions. It will simply be a process of watching what is going to happen given the location and time of each installation. The German art photographer and artist, Bernd Zoellner, will accompany the project, another part of which will emerge on a journey across California before it continues on to Europe. It will be interesting to see the reactions in London, Paris and Berlin. Most certainly, the language of each location will be different. The locations and timing will be sensitive to the composition: I’ll decide day-by-day, depending on my view and mood as well as on the sensibility and language of each location.
FP: Can you remember the first time someone ever gave you a bouquet of flowers? Do you have a favorite type?
AS: I recall a gift of flowers from a friend at my religious confirmation. They were presented in a bowl and I was immensely impressed and studied them with great interest. My favorite flower is always the one right in front of me, the one I am studying.
FP: What do you hope people walk away from your dispensers thinking?
AS: I hope to create a moment of irritation. Maybe astonishment. The project might create room for a new sensation: in the best-case scenario, the sense of receiving the gift of a moment in time. The unexpected change of everyday life and linear experience of time will create a subjective and especially meaningful interruption, giving space for individual flashes of sequences which are parallel to time and wide open for association.