Wish Collecting Project

What are your wishes ? Why did you wish them?

The Wish collecting project aims to create an archive that maps the dreams and desires of a cross section of contemporary society. It gives the public a voice by encouraging people to clarify and express their visions/hopes for the future. The project is expanding into several formats with over five hundred wishes collected so far. In February this year the Dutch -intiated Cascoland project (www.cascoland.com) ,woke up my sleepy hometown of Durban. The idea was to initiate projects that intervene in public space . I am interested in interrupting the robotic daily routines of commuters. Passers by are invited to write down their wish and hold it up in a portrait photograph which is subsequently printed out and given to them. The intention is to encourage the public to remember, re-enforce and reflect on the the actions or events which they need to manifest in their lives. At first I had a moral dilemma in getting people to publicly declare their wishes, aren't they supposed to remain secret? The solution is to create a wish list: wishes based on genuine need are written onto a list with the aim of finding ways of granting them (either in a personal capacity or by approaching people who have the necessary resources.) This would ideally encourage a culture of reciprocity where you would make a wish but also be able to read the wishes of others which it may be within your power to help fulfill. It would make people cut through their superficial desires to consider what their genuine needs are . The Cascoland project was located along a route between an informal housing settlement called Little Cato Manor, to the Durban Harbour. The route transects a variety of cultural and economic sectors of society. By collecting wishes from people along this route I was able to compare those of street children and the homeless with those of the affluent and educated. In this way wish collection can be used as an effective research tool. There have been two portable wish collection kiosks constructed which will be moved to different areas of the city and left in public spaces to enable people to make and deposit a wish anonymously. Each wisher will be given a receipt which they must retain until their wish comes true.