If you stage it, is it still real?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve placed stalks of: painted, raw, standing alone, staged with people. Each time, I tried to do as little as possible, to gently nudge an object into public space and observe how the world would respond. Sometimes people noticed. Sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they cleaned it up. Sometimes they let it be.
But one question kept hovering in the background:
“If you place it there yourself, is it still an everyday installation?”
This tension between spontaneity and authorship is where things get complicated. Can something still be considered accidental if I deliberately construct the illusion of accident? Or does that act of construction cancel out the magic?
The Charm of the Unplanned
Part of what makes everyday installations so captivating is that they’re unintentional. They feel found, not made. They are, by nature, unscripted like pizza carton, an empty bottle of broncho stop of a childs toy. No one planned them. No one curated them. And yet they resonate. They offer beauty without trying. That’s their entire point. So when I place a celery stalk on a ledge, even if it looks like a found object, it’s not. I put it there. It’s performance dressed as randomness.
This brings me to a quote I’ve kept coming back to throughout this process:
“Art is what you can get away with.” – Andy Warhol.
In other words: if I can make you believe that a piece of celery has somehow ended up in the perfect spot, framed by shadows, echoed by textures, charged with unspoken questions then maybe the illusion is enough.
But is that honest? Does the viewer deserve to know that what they’re seeing is staged?
Or is the not-knowing part of the experience? The audience becomes part of the scene without realizing it. Their reaction or lack of one completes the piece. Which means: even if the object is placed with intention, the experience remains authentic for those who encounter it unknowingly. Maybe it doesn’t matter who placed it. Maybe what matters is whether someone paused to ask, “What is this doing here?”
Between Found and Made
I think the answer lies somewhere in-between. Yes, I staged it. But I also let it go. Once it was placed, I didn’t control the story anymore. I didn’t explain it, label it, or guide the viewer. I just watched. In that sense, the work sits in a liminal zone:
Not quite found, but not fully imposed.
Not completely real, but not fake either.
What I’ve Learned So Far
If this experiment series has taught me anything, it’s that every gesture carries weight, even the quiet ones. Especially the quiet ones. People might not always notice. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work.
Sometimes, the art isn’t in the object, it’s in the act:
Placing. Waiting. Watching. Wondering.
