we are both imagining things

performance

I was working on a construction site many years ago and we used to gather for a cup of coffee in the morning before work. You would find yourself sitting on a bag of cement by a table made from a piece of drywall - drinking coffee and chatting away. We used to improvise cups like these because anything else would break or become grimy and unusable within the day. The next morning you would find yourself sitting in the same place again, drinking coffee from a newly improvised cup but the bag of cement would now be a staircase somewhere in the building and the drywall coffee-table would have become a living room partition, so we would arrange some electric wire rolls to sit on and find a stack of insulation to use as a table. Coffee appeared to be the only constant presence in a whirlwind of transformation. I was always fond of these cups and was determined to share this experience somehow because it had meant something to me at the time - and it still does.

 Who are the agents imagining things?

 I suppose it could be myself and anyone who chooses to participate in the experience, that is to say, someone who is willing to imagine the transformation of a glass jar or a tin can into a cup of coffee. However, I suspect that in the beginning the word ´both´ in the title referred to myself only and I applied the plural pronoun to include the speaker and the listener in a more private inner monologue. Although the coffee ritual is a social affair – a moment of sharing, it can also be a delicious private experience. However, anyone can approach the work and make a choice that corresponds to their own desires. You can reach out and grab a vessel from the shelve and it may be a work of art or it can simply be a cup of coffee. There is already a transformation in progress though, because the vessel will have been a marmite pot or a jar for pitted olives in some previous life. I want the objects to linger in that realm between the precious and the familiar.