FINDING GEORGE BELL (2016)

Finding George Bell is a performative research project based on an article in the New York Times, depicting the story of one person’s solitary life and suicide. Avoiding the article, I engaged in facetious research following a myriad of routes to “find” George Bell. Some paths included web searches of identities with the same name; plotting directions on a map between international cities George and Bell; and coopting found objects and personal memories to create fictional stories. The result was a maximal archive of an individual who does not exist in the world, yet exists everywhere.

This project is an exploration of relationship between self and other. It exists between information and refusal, truth and fiction, humorous research and genuine existential pursuit. By avoiding the internet’s only information source about the original George Bell, the research circled around an unfindable endpoint. The final installation is a poetic dedication, a stalker’s shrine, to a person whose life was largely invisible.