Incredible Witness @ Panoply Performance Laboratory. In and around 104 Meserole St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn. April 2 & 3, 2016.
Incredible Witness @ the Sunview Luncheonette. Nov. 15, 2015 and March 1, 2016. In and around The Sunview Luncheonette and McGorlick Park, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Incredible Witness is a public laboratory that asks: how can people ever be “credible witnesses” when even the most basic perceptions, such as color vision or spatial awareness, differ drastically from person to person?
We live in a historical period where the traditional binaries are breaking down, and some of the most basic assumptions about social life and hierarchies are falling apart-–the formerly “mainstream” assumptions around gender, race, and sexuality are being called into question.
As these structures fall, Incredible Witness asks: what next? How do we encourage this disintegration, and then how do we as a culture learn to see and accept each other fully, beyond the categories?
Our hypothesis: If you understand physically just how much basic perceptions differ from person to person, you begin to understand on a deep level just how different other perspectives can be and the importance of thoughtful, compassionate engagement.
In the Incredible Witness laboratory, we invite you into unusual perceptual worlds to bring home viscerally how different each person’s experience of the world can be. We also want to know about your own perceptual quirks and realities. Our experimental arsenal includes games, game-based interactive environments, augmented reality, performances, and online and in‐person interviews. We want to encourage people to think carefully about each person’s experience, and question (perceptual) authority. Through this process, we will side‐step political rhetoric and go straight to the body to nurture empathetic and compassionate consciousness.
Incredible Witness 