PARTICIPATION
Bureau of Thanks is a ‘listening post’ — an opportunity for visitor-participants to have the undivided attention of another human being, to be listened to. This interactive performance-installation is inspired by memories of form-fillers and petition writers who practiced their trade outside government offices in Malaysia where I grew up. It is also inspired by LA poet Jen Hofer’s *escritorio publico* love-letter project.
In Bureau of Thanks I set up a desk to listen and scribe handwritten Thank You notes addressed to, “a Person, a Place, or a Time.” Messages are dictated to me, the scribe, by visitor-participants. I request permission to retain a carbon copy of the note as a gift from the visitor-participant. The original note is given to the visitor-participant with an envelope to send it to its intended recipient. Carbon copied notes are collected in a small binder that other participants can read. Some anonymized notes are posted to the Bureau of Thanks Instagram account.
Performance October 29, 2023
at Torrance Art Museum’s Nomad II
Young Tseng makes work with mime, movement, and installation. His work comes out of the experience of shifting perspectives that can occur when, in the course of performance and preparing for performance, one is paying close attention — listening — to space, time, movement, stillness, and human and non-human presences. In everything he makes, Young Tseng seeks to share the experience of bringing attention to one’s presence. By doing so he hopes to create bubbles of time in which people might sit together, listen, and find their own possibilities for change.
Artist Location: Claremont, CA
Social Media: