Public/Private

Public/Private offers the Wellington community a different kind of art experience. Commuters and pedestrians will notice something usual and out of the ordinary in the windows above Patel’s Dairy on Aro Street as they make their way home as darkness falls during the last two weeks of June. Now, do they stop and stare or do they soldier onward to their destinations? Do they break social taboo and look into someone’s windows? Do they go even further and stop and chat with each other about what they are seeing?

These are the questions that William Franco and Miki Seifert of With Lime hope to raise with their unusual art project. Multimedia installation artists and Butoh performers Franco and Seifert have a long history of doing site-specific art here and in the US, as well as presenting their work in traditional venues of museums, galleries and theatres. Having come to Wellington in 2007 on Franco’s Fulbright Fellowship to collaborate with Maori artists, they have stayed and established with With Lime, an international, intercultural, interdisciplinary arts company that produces innovative projects to simulate dialogue with the long-term goal of creating social and cultural change.

Not wanting to give away the surprise, Franco and Seifert are coy about exactly what will appear in those windows, only saying it will be video projections as well as performance.

Public/Private will run Wednesday through Friday the last two weeks of June, offering a different viewing experience each night.

 What: With Lime presents Public/Private, projections and performance

 Where: The windows of 101 Aro Street, Aro Valley, Wellington

 When: 5pm -7pm, June 22, 23, 24, 29, 30, July 1, 2011

 Public/Private is funded by a grant from the Creative Communities NZ Wellington Local Funding Scheme.