Seiji's Perfect Day (February 2021)
PushOFF Idea Commission
Seiji’s Perfect Day is a playful and tender exploration of love, generosity, and the inherent unknowability of even our most intimate dear ones.
This interactive project asks, if you could give the perfect day to someone you love, without any restrictions, what would that day look like? Using a mad-libs inspired template, audience members chose someone in their life and designed a perfect day for that person, imagining how their miraculous day would unfold. A hotline was set up for audience members to call and leave a voice message describing this perfect day. The voice messages were collected and presented as an online public archive. This archive of perfect days offers a chance to peek into intimate details of real relationships, to hear the voices of a creative community, and to experience a collective gesture of generosity.
One lucky audience member had their submission transformed into an illustrated zine, which was delivered via snail mail to the real recipient of the perfect day:
This interactive project asks, if you could give the perfect day to someone you love, without any restrictions, what would that day look like? Using a mad-libs inspired template, audience members chose someone in their life and designed a perfect day for that person, imagining how their miraculous day would unfold. A hotline was set up for audience members to call and leave a voice message describing this perfect day. The voice messages were collected and presented as an online public archive. This archive of perfect days offers a chance to peek into intimate details of real relationships, to hear the voices of a creative community, and to experience a collective gesture of generosity.
One lucky audience member had their submission transformed into an illustrated zine, which was delivered via snail mail to the real recipient of the perfect day:
Audio Archive:
In our ultimate dream for the piece, we would spend years and an enormous budget actually constructing every person’s perfect day in the real world, hiring a stage manager in a helicopter to call cues for the ice cream truck coming around the corner, the gift drop on the front porch, the parade emerging unexpected from an alleyway. We would like to buy a plane ticket to fly in the long lost friend, bribe a radio host to play the right song at the right time, recruit actors to stop and give compliments on the street, and hire an animal handler to release the puppy that wanders into the yard. Just like you, we want these perfect days to be real. Seiji’s Perfect Day is a gesture towards the space between what we want for the ones we love, and what we can give them. It is an ode to the imperfect attempt, and to the generosity and love between us.
