Yay Cookies!

Yay Cookies! stimulates the senses of sight and taste in a sneaky intervention to brighten your day. This piece is a site-specific social intervention inspired by the notion that sometimes we don’t want to go to class, but a shared plate of cookies is a welcome surprise that somehow makes the classroom experience a bit more pleasant. (This is not meant as a statement about Installation Art class by any means; rather, this stems from my current frustration with academia in general.)

By offering classmates a plate of fresh, homemade chocolate chip cookies, I am subtly infiltrating and shifting your in-class experience. In doing so, my intentions are to trigger your memory and make you happy. Chocolate chip cookies are an ideal medium for triggering memory because they are pervasive in domestic American culture, and therefore are often associated with childhood, family and home. These cookies also support the intention of making people happy because, simply, most people think they are yummy!

This project is influenced by the simple, deliberate pieces created by many members of Fluxus. Here are two examples by Albert M. Fine and Don Boyd, respectively:

Ice Cream Piece
Performer buys an ice cream cone and then [a] eats it, or [b] gives it to a stranger, or [c] waits until it melts completely, then eats the cone, or [d] on finishing the piece, buys another ice cream cone.
1966

A Performance Calendar (for El Djerrida)
For whom? Anyone.
When? Anytime.
JANUARY
Obey all laws 30 days. One day disobey one law.
FEBRUARY
Make a work with the fewest elements possible. One item?
MARCH
Watch the clouds on a sunny day for 10 minutes.
APRIL
Watch some kind of insect for 10 minutes.
MAY
Take a book and a pen. [An old-fashioned ink pen]. Sit in the woods for 30 minutes watching and listening. Write of what you see and feel and hear.
JUNE
Find a sheep. Watch it 30 minutes.
JULY
Find a wolf. Watch it 30 minutes.
AUGUST
Write a letter to the IRS [Internal Revenue Service or the equivalent income tax authority where you live], explaining how difficult it is to achieve lofty dryness.
SEPTEMBER
Make a list of your four favorite books. Send it to me.
OCTOBER
Make your favorite dish of food. Send me the recipe.
NOVEMBER
Go somewhere and watch it snow. Sit with a friend. Drink hot tea.
DECEMBER
Give something you treasure to another person
1989

As with Yay Cookies!, neither of these pieces necessarily deal with recontextualization, reappropriation, or a visible relationship between artist and viewer/audience. None of these works directly question or provoke. These works simply explore deliberate action, and though it isn't expressed explicitly, each piece also makes space for a reaction. With Yay Cookies!, I am similarly exploring a deliberate action: the simple act of baking and sharing cookies. And similarly, I am making space for people’s reactions; my hope, of course, is that they will all be positive.

Source:

Friedman, Ken, Owen Smith and Lauren Sawchyn. Fluxus Performance Workbook. Performance Research e-Publications, 2002. http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/fluxusworkbook.pdf.