FFWD REW

At least we have Each Other

Getting out in the city for the sake of art

My first kiss was with a Mormon girl in junior high school; a terribly unromantic bathroom makeout session separated from a boisterous birthday party by a thin door. One of my companions on a recent arts adventure traversing downtown Calgary had my story beat though. This well-known local artist’s first kiss was in Sydney Australia behind an outhouse in the 1960s.

Swapping stories is part of the fallout from a project that aims to bring people closer together bust down barriers and force people to not only explore their surroundings but — and this is the tough part — actually engage with one another.

Each Other as it’s appropriately called is a temporary storefront set in the lobby of the Martha Cohen Theatre where patrons can take away kits designed to send you off madly in all directions. One kit includes two dice one with directions that include “First Kiss” (walk in the direction of your first kiss and perhaps swap tales) “Danger” and “Up Hill.” The other die tells you how long you should walk in that direction.

On a warm winter day Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton the two artists responsible for the storefront set off with myself and two others dice in hand. We wandered down Macleod Trail and rode an elevator to the second level of an office building (“Up Hill”). We stumbled into an art exhibition featuring the work of Shannon Morgan a young woman who committed suicide in January last year. We walked alleys and we talked.

In addition to the dice kits include small bits of string and a map to trace a line and then follow that route regardless of pesky obstacles such as private property. Perhaps you prefer to form dog piles in the middle of the sidewalk? There’s a kit for that. If you want to drop confetti from a height on unsuspecting passersby Moschopedis and Rushton have you covered. You can even grab an Each Other bowtie with the intention of standing in front of a restaurant in an attempt to form a line behind you. Participants get to keep the kits. It’s like a library but the return is measured in cultural participation.

The point is to force you off the beaten path to kill the notion of going in a straight line from A to B and maybe send you somewhere you’ve never been. During workshops with the artists like the stroll I took (the next and last one is March 7) you might even get to meet some new people.

Moschopedis says he sometimes feels like he’s just turning fun teenage pranks and antics into art but he doesn’t seem to mind. After strolling around with him and the rest of the group for an hour or so I don’t mind either.

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