IMAGINE 16 PEOPLE
Their paths have never crossed.
But they are about to meet.
By design.
Briefly.
And once.
Welcome to N.
***
‘N’ gathers 16 strangers for a big blind date in each of 16 cities.
*Cities with an ‘N’ in them.
To talk about a topic that starts with an ‘N.’
In a venue that has an ‘N’ in its name.
MATH & GEOMETRY. Okay, I need to explain the little arrow on top of the ‘N’. And the ‘variable’ idea, behind ‘N’, too. This is a bit mathy. So, yeah. Okay, now I have to talk about vectors. That instance of intersecting vectors (16 of them), that moment, that is a point. Right. Bear with me now. A point is onceness, in a tangible spatial representation. I know this is heady. But yeah. Imagine it. Picture it. Sixteen people meeting just once in their city. What might happen? I love that. The urgency of now. And this is the ‘onceness’ instance we call ‘N’. Making space for ‘N’ moments to happen is the reason we are going around the world hosting ‘N’. No one is sponsoring this. No outcomes to share outside of the circles of people who are saying ‘yes’ and opting in. No donors, no advertisers, none of that. Guests contribute towards tickets, that’s it. But who cares about monetary stuff. Let’s find a way to be interesting. Yes?
INTERESTINGNESS. Let’s make it even more interesting. Let’s host each ‘N’ in a venue that starts with an ‘N’. Let’s enjoy a theme, too, and for each city pick a new one, a theme that will start with an ‘N.’ And just to be even more arbitrary rule-y about this, let’s do ‘N’ events only in cities that have an ‘N’ in their name. Constraints, right? Don’t designers love playing with the room you get, which can be so expansive, within the bounded box?
The story so far
SO FAR. ‘N’ started in 2014. That’s when ‘N’ happened in Phnom Penh. The next year, 2015, DK hosted ‘N’ in Bangkok, and in 2016 it went to London, in 2017 to Hanoi. What happened so far? Who came? Are you wondering? Well, there is nothing to report. Because the whole thing about ‘N’ is that it’s about who comes and what happens in that exact moment. To write about it afterwards from my own perspective wouldn’t be interesting, and it’s too hard to get 16 people to contribute to a writeup. (I’ve tried). But I did chronicle the Hanoi one, just because people were curious and asked, and because it was about NARRATIVE, so that made sense.
But yeah.
So we are leaving it quietly mysterious, and that’s just fine.
Each person who has joined ‘N’, that means committed, gotten a ticket, helped choose the date, and arrived on the day, each guest that completed the ‘N’ journey was asked to select a unique color from the 256-block color grid pictured above. So that means, by the time this project is finished, we’ll have a person connected to each color. What we look like, how we sound, what we think about, what we choose to identify with… these usual ways we define ourselves gets thrown out. And we become, in the short space of ‘N’, a box of color.
Want to know more?
11N
‘N’ Phnom Penh: New Normal
Tickets go on sale: 5 September
*Secret Date*
*Secret Location*
***
request an invitation
10N
‘N’ Internet: NEXT
via Zoom
1, 2 & 3 October 2021
11N
‘N’ Hồ Chí Minh: NGHỆ THUẬT NÓI CHUYỆN
‘The art of conversation’
11N
Passengers Coffee, Young Coffee, Atelier S P A C E, New Young Coffee
October 2020, December 2020, April 2021, October 2021
10N
‘N’ Internet: NEXT
[cancelled] [postponed]
9N
‘N’ Melbourne: NOTICING
[cancelled]
8N
‘N’ Penang: NOSTALGIA
Narrow Marrow
5 November 2019
7N
‘N’ Vilnius: NEW
Bastion of the Defensive Wall
1 June 2019
6N
‘N’ Helsinki: NEUROSIS
Semifinal
29 August 2018
Reported in the zine, S P A C E | Helsinki, ‘Coat Check’
5N
‘N’ Copenhagen: NEARNESS
Niels Bohr Institute
29 July 2018
4N
‘N’ Hanoi: NARRATIVE
Nhọ Nồi
27 June 2017
3N
‘N’ London: NOTEWORTHINESS
National Theatre
15 November 2016
2N
‘N’ Bangkok: NOW
NIKKO Cafe
11 October 2015
1N
‘N’ Phnom Penh: NORMALITY
NUK Cafe
26 April 2015
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