A Receipt for Strangers (2026), Interactive Installation and Performance; 180 minutes (October 16-17); receipt printer, button; Chicago, IL
Technical support: Nickii Schamborski
During the performance, whenever a viewer presses the button, the artist, who is going about her life somewhere away from the receipt printer, pauses to edit and generate a receipt, which is then printed for that viewer.
The artist keeps trying to reach out to viewers. By following the clues on the receipt, a viewer may trace this longing to connect with strangers back to its source and come to recognize the artist as its author, or may not. Beneath the title of “artist” is a person who exists in a specific time and place and can be found.
In an age that is individualistic, alienated and disconnected, the artist tries to bypass the official, normative and rigid procedures of social exchange, and build a concrete experience of connection from the poetry of everyday trivia, fragments of imagined scenes built together, and the absurdity, uncertainty and mystery of unknownness. Through the content of each receipt, she hopes this experience points toward a collective one: something shared, through which people can reconnect.
