A recipe combining twenty yards of blue clothing, a thousand safety pins, a dance performed continuously as a generator, a bucket of dirt, dried peas and wishes, a little water and the power of human hearts. An avatar that is neither male nor female, human nor animal. A wall of fabric connecting us to past and future in an imagined space that looks like the place we’re in. A durational, interactive performance installation lasting four hours.

The central problem of this work resides in the construction of “the real” through fantasies of place, action and site-specificity. The personas we create, and artists from whom we appropriate, aid us in understanding our real selves in place and time. This site-sensitive work, part of the first annual Sidewalk Festival of the Performing Arts, took place in Artist Village, in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit. The work and festival celebrated a coalition of artists, business people and organizations engaged in fighting the city’s blight and contributing to the reclamation and revitalization this neighborhood and city need.

We invite the audience to consider answers to the question: “What would you like to plant in your heart or home?” Not for what do you wish, but rather what do you intend to cultivate? Participants write their responses, contributing them to the installation, then re-writing them on rice paper in which they place potting soil and a single, dried pea. They place the bundles in pots and take them home to tend to the growing plants.