Second-year Creative Writing student Elisa Ip.
The Green Box(es), an interactive art project, will be taking place on campus the first two weeks of December.
Each participant in Instructor Mark Giles’s creative writing seminar has been asked to fill a green box with items connected by a theme. The campus community is then welcome to explore the boxes; check to see what’s inside and how the contents are connected. Giles notes that the Green Box(es) are a kind of homage to artist Michel Duchamp’s project La Boîte Verte – like Duchamp, these boxes engage with notions of authenticity, containment, and détournement, says Giles.
Second-year Creative Writing student Elisa Ip says part of the exercise is for the creative writing students to interact with the campus community. The theme of her green box is nature, so she has been collecting items like leaves, pine cones, and stones.
“The idea is that someone from campus will come and look at the items I’ve collected and we have a dialogue about them,” says Ip. “People have different reactions to items — things have different meanings to different people. It should create a pretty good discussion.”
The boxes are about 11 X 14 in size and all bright green. The boxes and students will be in the foyer of the Fipke Foyer December 1 until December 10. The event begins December 1 at 2 p.m. with a kick-off event until 3:30 p.m. At that time, artists will introduce their works. Refreshments including baking will be available. The boxes will remain in the foyer until December 10.
“Part of the fun will be for people to discover what the students have put in the boxes and then talk about why they are important to us,” says Ip. “I think it’s an interesting way to bring the Creative Writing students out of the classroom.”
