What are you Looking at?
by Erin Wakeland
| Nonfiction
| Published 01-01-2021
The book, What are you Looking at? details four social experiments: mending and returning red solo cups from a fraternity’s yard, hanging a banner hand stitched with “You Have Everything You Need” in places of commerce, placing postcards in public places with a prompt to be returned to Erin Wakeland, and en plein air painting in the Meijer Superstore. Each experiment is framed in essay form as Wakeland uses interviews, photos, diaristic writing, and other documentation to reflect on her relationship to the topics at hand. She explores the relationships between worthiness, ordinariness, and what happens to people’s attention in a capitalist system through interventions in everyday happenings.
Erin Wakeland is a 2020 graduate of the University of Michigan. This is her integrative project for the Penny W. Stamps BFA program. She was the first recipient of the Big Idea Award upon graduation. She enjoys a lot of things. Some more than others.