Carrie Schneider

An anonymous, reciprocal participatory message exchange project based on stages of life. The exchange occurs online and in stage exchange boxes all around Houston. An experiment in linking by category of experience what is usually fractured by category of identity, and an attempt to intimately defying aloneness. This gallery shows selected installations of the 35 stage exchange boxes evenly spaced within the loop. You can participate or see images of the sited boxes at: http://stageexchange.blogspot.com/

A hyper-insulated, master planned development of upscale condos and retail has replaced two city blocks at a busy Houston intersection. The private company overtook the public sidewalk with a fence that hides construction and advertises the type of people they wish to attract. To remind them of who is actually there building it for them every day, but ultimately being shut out, I added six 9' tall silhouettes of construction workers.

I tell a story to a participant and they share a story with me. I remember their story and retell it to the next participant, in exchange for a story from them. The practice continues with over 170 stories traded. Over a sustained time, untrackable in its entirety and only documentable as a fraction of the entire work, the project's only physicality is the gesture of exchange, left as traces in each participants experience.

To create a social network that would span the most opposite cultural environments and academic specializations I could imagine, I facilitated an exquisite corpse collaboration between artists at Maryland Institute College of Art and physicists at Texas A&M University in which each group used their respective language to converse with the other.

A Self Compassion is a practice and a performance to suture myself in this moment to lost and disconnected moments of myself. I spoke a continously revised dialog to younger versions of myself as they grow up; singing, soothing, warning, screaming- cohering these Carries into who I am now through a dialogical act of compassion that reclaims the narrative of my life. When other people view this practice it becomes a performance and I amplify messages that are both salient to me as an individual and relatable as common experiences of growing up. My back is to any witnesses who enter the room, only the images face them, and they enter after Ive begun the interaction. There is no seating and witnesses are free to self-determine their own point of view and relationship to the work. Most women witnesses of my age were deeply touched, most older women felt they needed to encourage me. With these reactions in mind, I will continue the practice at ten year intervals as I grow older. Click images to view descriptions of how this practice evolved through photography and video installations as well.

Argentine tango is an intimate, interactive, and immediate art. At a milonga I had each tanguero and tanguera write a message on the palm of their partner before beginning to dance. The hot Houston night and the intense, intimate dance of tango dissolved our messages into the palms of one another. Photos of the unread messages were shared only later, inserting language that described a connection into the memory of a sensed experience.

To subject the physical embodiment of a word to a process that negates its meaning I carved the word "STUCK" out of salt licks from a local feed store and placed it on the shoreline for the salt water to dissolve and disperse.

While writing an art history thesis about portraiture via the soft science of physiognomy, I read that the right side of your face represents the dominant personality- the self which you present to the world, and the left side represents the recessive, introverted self. Physiognomy relies on the idea that you determine your own face as you age because facial bones are eroded and facial muscles are built up by the expressions that we habitually display. These expressions are determined by our reactions to events and our outlook on life (strong jutting jaw for an aggressive, assertive personality, weak chin for someone who looks at the floor, apologizes for their words). I tested it out in a class that focused on the doubling of reality by showing each person's actual face, the right side mirrored, and the left side of the face mirrored. Each portrait is strangely unrecognizable and yet also telling of the personality.

Ten people are translated into flavors of ice cream and invited to taste each others identities. Artist/Biologist Adeetje Bouma and I concocted: Neil: honey nut cheerio milk, vanilla extract, peanut butter, pretzels. Eloise: lavender, chamomile, hibiscus, hyssop, white chocolate covered raisins. Joel: chocolate, coffee grounds, red hots, chili powder. Ben: ham sandwich. Tasting from unlabeled pints, the participants guessed who was who with 90% accuracy.

Installation for Drawn Together exhibition at labotanica: Each side of the window, the physical border between the interior of the art space and the exterior of the everyday, is provided with dry erase markers and invited to leave their mark in response and reaction to the other. Inspired by drawing as raw witness and unmediated communication, this project activates borderspace as a transparent platform for dialog. It is a temporary testament to the empowering and participatory role of art in the third ward where the El Dorado Ballroom, Emancipation Park, and Project Row Houses are.

In the wake of Ike I collaborated with Houston artists in a healing ceremony based on a love letter I wrote to my hurricaned city and its harboring of many victims. We used the very flood waters which had spread so much destruction to dissolve the words and lave care throughout the city. A recording of a local musician's lullaby over the city was played while Houstonians youtube footage of Ike flooded the ceremony space. I read the love letter line by line, dipping my hands into water and handing out each flooded page.