ARTISTS DAVID HORVITZ AND LUKAS GERONIMAS TAKE "THE BOX GAME" ON THE ROAD

US and Canada – Artists David Horvitz and Lukas Geronimas are touring the United
States and Canada during March and April 2009 with their art project The Box Game
(boxgame.org), a traveling performance where the artists ask the question: “What’s in the
box?”

The premise is simple: write your guess for what's inside the box on a paper ballot and
insert it in the box. Each participant’s guess counts as a vote that will determine what is
inside the box once the game ends. Through this process, the artists hope to use The Box
Game to make a thought-experiment tangible. The Box Game is the first stage of Horvitz
and Geronimas’s larger project What’s in the Box? The game is also the inaugural
exhibition for the Black Hole Space (blackholespace.org), a traveling art venue conceived
by Joshua Kit Clayton and curated by Terri C. Smith.

Answers received during The Box Game tour will be compiled and analyzed during the
artists’ ten-day residency at the nascent Madiman Arts Interaction Center in New Haven,
CT. The artists will have access to data analysis software and the advice of Yale faculty as
they parlay the guesses from the game into the democratically desired object. In the end,
Horvitz and Geronimas will exhibit their created “answer” as well as ephemera from the
tour and residency. This performative art project highlights how constantly changing
states only become 'real' once observed. What’s in the Box? is also designed to question
the ability of objective methods (the survey, analysis of data) to produce successful
artworks. The Box Game asks, “What does democracy do for art, and science?”

The project allows all contestants to participate in the distribution of the identifiable
qualities of an artwork, arguably shrinking the gap between the thoughts and actions of
the viewer and those of contemporary artists. Using the history and aesthetic of U.S.
roadside attractions, these emerging artists take survey projects by predecessors such as
Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid (e.g. People’s Choice series, 1994-1997) into a
swampier place where the objective and the sensory temporally collide.

Contacts:
Lukas Geronimas: lukasgeronimas@gmail.com
Terri C. Smith: tcamillesmith@gmail.com