Momentarium : : by Markuz Wernli Saitô

Are you an excellent chef? Looking for [20-30] qualified chefs to make meals for strangers. There is no pay. It will not cost you anything to prepare the meal. You will be greatly rewarded. Get in touch with organizer Max Infeld. Momentarium submitted this idea to FREE PUBLIC RENTALS in Chico, California on November 5, 2008 with the title "Your Pantry is My Inspiration: Artist Creates Delicious Home-Cooked Meal Within 90 Minutes."

With artist Hiroko Kikuchi I am currently preparing the social advocacy initiative Skinshipu that is meant to grow over time into variuous directions and genres. In an attempt to invite people to understand not only the tradition of shared water and bathing culture (in Japan and beyond), but also its cultural impact that will bring up fundamental issues of human relationship.

Have you ever arrived at a foreign town and wondered what it would be like to see through the insider's eyes?

What would the world look like? What stories would unfold? Instead of taking photographs yourself you would ask local people to take pictures of what they personally found noteworthy. Explore in the recently released documentary movie the motives and outcomes.

We were interested in what Bao Loc town in Southern Vietnam looks like to its own people.

We wondered what would happen when people took photographs who never used a camera before? How would the images differ from those an outsider would take? What would they reveal about themselves and their world that an outsider could never capture? Beyond these questions we were most interested in building a connection to 15 local people and to their families and homes.

Momentarium compiled more than six hours of raw video footage into a colorful 13 minute commentated documentary that explains the Shadow Followers project from inception to future implications.

Exhibition report: Towards a Culture of Peace
In late August 2008, a group of international photographers explored visual languages of peace that are neither antitodes of war, nor sugar-sweet utopia. Markuz Wernli Saito looks at how artists expand from inner peace, scrutinize meaning in conflict, seek ways of provoking peace, or touch on empathy and oneness. No matter what creative strategy is taken, peace is created only in relationship.

badatsports: Episode 136, Ampersand International
Brian Anders and Marc Deblanc talk at Ampersand gallery in San Francisco with Lori Gordon, Hope Hilton, Markuz Wernli Saito and Bruno Mauro about Lying to Curators and strange Effects of Silence.

CASAzine issue 4: Drawing the Line (between art and activism)
In the most recent issue I am discussing with curators Milena Placentile and Monika Vykoukal the public action series At Your Service where we look closer at activist implications and combined efforts towards social transformation.

ASPECT The Chronicle of New Media Art, Vol. 10: Rural Educator and environmental journalist Deborah Mantle didn't shy from getting up early and wet feet. She joined me to a City Canal Tour and realized a commented video-feature for this DVD magazine. Read the experience report on wilderness in the urban.

DIALOG IN COMMON

Brett Bloom [Temporay Services] reflects on the Service Paradigm in art: "It is the social spaces that artists produce. This can produce a sociological analysis if we are talking of art as providing a service."

Jane Trowell [Platform London] talks about artful collaboration and public learning: "Basically it's about making a subject dynamic, which before was made accessible to a very specific audience through restricted language."

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Each moment of the everyday, every action of living, poses the question: how it might be lived differently, more truthfully and respectfully. Through conscious interventions Momentarium provides a forum of inquiry on human coexistence.