• Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan
Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan

Waiting for Godot in New Orleans : A Field guide / edited by Paul Chan

Books

FA.SA4.1611
Fine Art Collection
338 pages, maps ; 26 x 20 cm.
2010
Paul Chan
Paul Chan
Samuel Beckett
Creative Time
Louisiana
hurricanes, natural disasters, racial discrimination
e-flux
"In November 2006, the artist Paul Chan visited New Orleans, in particular those parts of the city devastated by Katrina. "Friends said the city now looks like the backdrop for a bleak science-fiction movie. (...) I realized it didn't look like a movie set, but the stage for a play I have seen many times." That play was Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a play that has often been successfully staged in politically charged circumstances, such as a prison (San Quentin), and during a war (the Siege of Sarajevo, directed by Susan Sontag). In 2007, Chan staged four free outdoor performances of Godot in two New Orleans neighborhoods. This volume records Chan's project in essays and photographs, elucidating the terrible symmetry between Godot and post-Katrina New Orleans, and, as Chan writes, 'the cruel and funny things people do while they wait: for help, for food, for hope'"--Amazon.

"The final installment of Creative Time's multi-part Waiting for Godot in New Orleans by Paul Chan, A Field Guide brings together a rich collection of primary ephemera, photographs, articles, and essays that explore the project's unique process from conception to completion. Divided into eight sections (Remember, Picture, Relate, Organize, Appear, Play, Film, Reflect), the book centers around the production of Samuel Beckett's classic play over two weekends in two New Orleans neighborhoods-the middle of an intersection in the Lower Ninth Ward, and the front yard of an abandoned house in Gentilly. The production re-imagines the post-Katrina landscape of New Orleans as the setting for the 20th century's most emblematic story of waiting, and in doing so, illuminates the personal and political conditions facing the people of New Orleans and evacuees in surrounding cities"--e-flux.

Published by Creative Time, New York, c2010. First edition. ISBN 9783865608093