The class I teach is attended by two pupils - two girls from the 12 grade to be more exact. This Monday I brought twenty found objects that I took from the vicinity of a deserted block of flats in the Pipera area in Bucharest. I had carried them to school inside a broken briefcase and a plastic bag.
I wanted to show them how they could create meaning using words and things. We began an exercise that led to an area which was ruled by randomness: each of the pupils had to find a word in the dictionary, by arbitrarily opening the book.
We then printed the words and they were asked to pick an object from the open briefcase without looking. All kinds of exclamations followed, as the objects they took out eyes cloesd were dirty, or unpleasant to touch.
As the objects were coming out of the briefcase, they received a label, which was a word from the dictionary.
After taking photographs, I put the objects back inside and closed the briefcase.
I had also brought over a bag with ten other objects, and I asked the girls to take them out one by one. Also, they had to place one of the words from an Ezra Pound poem - 'In a Station of the Metro' over each of them. My intention was to show them that one can advance from a series of objects over which random meanings are superimposed towards a series of objects that are still not connected, but ordered by a coherent piece of text.
