Final Intervention - Emmanuel Orellana Monsalve

For my final project, I performed a social experiment at GSUB blindfolding myself with a paper/sign taped to my hoodie reading "Hello! I'm here if you need to talk about anything or let any feelings out that you have holding in! Everything you say will be anonymous due to me not being able to see you. If you need a hug, high-five, or handshake or any type of comfort I am here. I am only here for ONE hour." 

Me at 11:00 prepared to Stand

My main message for this intervention/social experiment that I was trying to go for was to make people step out of their comfort zone and open up any feeling they were going through whether it be they are feeling sad,happy or neutral. 

The way I engaged with the audience or anyone that had gone up to me was with the help of one of the students in the GSUB building helping me record whilst I was doing this performance. He had sometimes helped with leading people to go to me or people were to go up to me, read the sign on my hoodie and read it. The way I knew that they were in front of me was them saying “Hi” and the conversation started from there.

My main inspiration to do this social experiment was ages ago when I came across a video of someone doing this in public and seeing what people were to do, however my sign was different from theirs but the goal was the same.

Inspiration:

https://www.tiktok.com/@tofastuqad/video/7245161361918070062?q=blindfolded%20guy%20with%20hug%20me%20sign&t=1745965206233

https://www.tiktok.com/@mdmotivator/video/6949755359263247621?q=blindfolded%20guy%20with%20hug%20me%20sign&t=1745965206233

https://www.tiktok.com/@brad_podray/video/7205962316750343467?q=blindfolded%20guy%20with%20hug%20me%20sign&t=1745965206233

The truth is that there wasn’t really research I did for this intervention, instead I just wanted to be out there for an hour and offer myself to be there for people and let people know that people care and that I am proud of them.

This project does sort of help me in a professional run with being used to talking to people randomly more and more and be open to people more about ideas and listen to people as well.

My experience doing this intervention really made me happy with the people that had come up to me. There was only 4 people that had gone up to me (which I'm SUPER SUPER grateful for) that had wanted to talk to me about any problems they had. One of them had thanked me for doing this and how they really needed this and I remember after they left I was very happy I was able to do something for someone and made them feel happy. I also when waiting for people just thinking how to write anything for this assignment and just listening to the music that was put in GSUB.

Below I'm showing some images of people going up to me and telling me about how they are feeling:

Censoring their faces incase of privacy reasons!

Lastly, I want to give a big thanks to these two guys for giving me ideas and telling me where to stand better. This project wouldn't have been done without them.

Thank you.

All the following quotes are from the book we viewed are used here.

Q1:"We seem to spend much more of our time and attention focusing on what keeps us down instead of looking up"

R2: This quote really resonates with me, there are moments in my life where I do feel upset and feel like nothing

is going to go well. However! Now I try to remember a quote from a manga artist and keep my head up!

Q2: "Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change open begin in art.”

Q3: "Another important goal of activist art is to create awareness of existing political and social issues. When the public is looking away from suffering that could be prevented or does not want to be confronted with it, activist art often creates a dialogue and forces people to think about these problems"

R3: This quote/line made me think how even if people make great art and try to express an important message. People will ignore whether it is an important cause or problem that people need to talk about. Which makes me sad that the amount of work someone puts in can and will go to waste if people don't stop and look at what the art is talking about.

Q4: "With the help of these horses, they use different crowd control techniques that they learned at the police academy such as making people move in certain directions or separating people into groups. The Cuban artist said that it was important to her that the audience was unaware of the fact that the policemen’s actions were part of the work of art.

R4: This quote/line made me realize even if there are a lot of people showing and making activism art. Behind those voices people are afraid that they will be silenced and their voice or opinion will never be heard.