Project Description

Manhattan Cache was accepted for the 2008 iteration of the Conflux Festival in New York City, which was held just weeks after I moved to New York from California. Conflux was a 3-day festival for location-based art (urban games, locative media, navigational performance, and so on). Manhattan Cache asked residents of different NYC neighborhoods to contribute personal expressions about living in New York, and this could have been in the form of a poem, a drawing, trinket ... items that expressed their exprience of city life.

The project was a great idea, with brilliant intentions, that had too little time and support to be fully realized. But I love the project, and perhaps the notion alone, like a Fluxus instruction, inspires its completion, psychically if nothing else.

I printed cards and flyers to promote the project and request contributions. In order to receive the items, I made seven caches - small treasure chests - and located them in local stores and cafes in various Manhattan neighborhoods. The project was also listed on the festival website. I invested quite a lot of effort into assembling project elements, contacting neighborhood leaders, and distributing the project pieces.

The cache box 'artefacts' were to be displayed with annotations - an informal archeological exhibit - that could provide personal insights into city living, along with the pleasure of sharing creative expressions. The concept of using cache boxe contributions stems from my 2005 project, Perfect View, for which I visited thirty 'sublime sites' recommended by Geocache hobbyists. The sites were located all over the U.S., and found by using GPS coordinates during a 13,000 mile motorcycle trip.