Project B@E by Kyuja Bae

Project B@E (Birthday at Email) is created by Kyuja Bae during the workshop (3 weeks) with performance artist, Joshua Sofaer at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, 30th April, 2010.

The main goal of this project is investigating how a repetitive event like a birthday party can transform into an interesting performance art dealing with the theme of identity. Kyuja Bae wants to experiment this project in many different countries and meet the different cultures and people for better understanding who the audience/friends are to the performer/Kyuja Bae.

Project B@E in Fredrikstad, 2010

For 12days, I had 45 meetings randomly with strangers in the street

and I got 40 email addresses from them by using the name of “art”.

I sent 40 invitation emails to the strangers through the email address I got without letting them know it would be a birthday party.

I got 5 answers back from them with 2 positive answers that they would come and 3 negative answers.

No one came for the birthday party in a gallery from the strangers.

But I had 2 attendants by accident.

I sent 37 emails to them again with 3 questions

1) why didn't you come to my invitation?

2) Why did you let me (stranger) know your email address?

3) Will you come if you are invited again for this project in the future?

I got 10 answers back from them,

80% of them were busy,

10% forgot and 10% were tired so that they couldn’t come.

50% wanted to be kind to me so they just shared their email addresses,

30% thought I looked nice so that they gave me their email address even though I was

totally stranger to them.

And 20% gave me no answer for the second question.

80% said yes if it's possible , they would like to come and see my work another time and 20% mentioned no answer for the third question.

3 of the strangers wanted to see some photos of the performance if they can.

1 of the stranger wanted to keep in touch with me

and we exchanged emails and now we are friends on facebook.

2 of the strangers encouraged me by saying this world needs the artist like me.

1 of the stranger kindly gave me a feed back on my project.