beds. dormitory feel. luggage. blanket. dishes. showers? toilets? they’re in a group but also individuals at the same time. artwork and also receivers of info at the same time. receiving more than giving out. selection. simple. profession. location. possible interest in the project. possibility of having an effect on their life. parents? eighteen to sixty. preference of the embassy. people who can determine their will. biggest worry. how to select people. where to get them. met with embassy first. documentary film. sixteen teams all over the country. already six-hundred hours of footage. people also need to answer ninety-nine questions from fake. about germany. the west. fantasy. religion. work through e-mail. make participants start to participate. the first step. already a part of it. even if the visa process may fail. june thirteen. announcement of the artists of documenta twelve. the project is impossible to keep a secret. logistically. not boat-people. boeing-people. usb-stick. memory stick. memory of today. infrastructure hardware. network infrastructure. upload. download. twenty computers. printers. a working office space that people can freely use. create an information landscape. info-booth. usb-stick will contain the memory of one individual. corporate gift. two sticks. one at start. upload. download. use. then at departure take in stick and give a new blank one. keep this memory, this accumulated knowledge. the used one you keep as a trace of this experience. memory of participant and memory of event. a thousand and one different eyes. one may be completely into all the artworks. another may not give a damn. i’ll be a cook. a barber. the teacher. informational storage. where to eat? where to sleep? what to buy? what to visit? most will not speak english or german. need information. mapping. computer technicians? doctor? impose on top of kassel another layer of information. modeled after a map of china. your own city in any city. when it’s gone it’s gone. traces in mind not in physical space. why products. so much stuff. unnecessary. what will be related to the stick? information centre. we want to be active. them to be active. interface architecture. set up a condition. we don’t know what’s going to happen. we provide a possibility. most fascinating thing. usb one GB. one thousand and one GB. a photograph of each? that’s the studio photo! ask people to do it themselves. assuming that most people have a camera. otherwise provide twenty or so cameras. each group roughly two-hundred. on the planes forty here. sixty there. some from beijing. some from shanghai. and insurance. one-thousand yuan per person. plane tickets non-refundable. over twenty people to coordinate the work. will have volunteers in kassel. can probably have computers and technicians. map-office sets up scenario. something personal. emphasize individual. the more unpredictable, unforeseeable elements we put in the better. when i started i didn’t know it was going to be like this. chinese people get very emotional. one girl wrote me that one day she was standing on a traffic overpass and started thinking about the fact that she will partake in this project and that she was so happy it made her cry. she said she never knew she could cry out of happiness.image edited from: http://blog.sina.com.cn/aiweiwei