TED Active

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Banana Hotline
Banana Sound Circle

FALLEN FRUIT FACTORY

a public participatory project by Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young).

The Fallen Fruit Factory is a public participatory art project that allows the public to collaborate with Fallen Fruit and contemporary artists to create fast-art pieces. The Factory is co-hosted by a contemporary artist and Fallen Fruit and creates an immersive art experience where the public can participate in making works of art. In exchange for working on Factory art projects, the public gets Fruit Dollars redeemable for Fallen Fruit or Factory art at the Fruitique! or online at the Fallen Fruit store. Projects are always group-authored, meaning there isn’t one person who creates each individual work. Often the works are inspired both by the guest artist and Fallen Fruit, but it is the stranger or passerby who sets the color, tone, or unique dimensionality of each piece. No two works of art will be the same!

“when life gives you lemons…”

“Lemonade Stand”, a public participatory artwork by Fallen Fruit explores ideas of temporary community and new forms of public. In exchange for a cold glass of organic lemonade, participants are asked to create self-portraits using black ink markers on lemons and to share stories of sadness and disappointment, or happiness and positive self-reflection.

The lemon self-portraits will collectively form a group portrait of everyone who participated, illustrating some of the archetypes that construct community. Additionally, as participants are asked to record stories about neighborhood and family, the Lemonade Stand will activate the phrase… “when life gives you lemons…”

Del Aire Public Fruit Park, public art installation, 2012

Working with residents of the Del Aire neighborhood in Hawthorne, California, this public fruit park attempts to transform the entire community.  While focused on a single “eye” with 12 fruit trees, it is surrounded by 24 other fruit trees scattered throughout the park, and 48 trees adopted by residents and planted on the periphery of private and public property throughout the neighborhood.  Commission from the Los Angeles County Department of Cultural Affairs.

New York Times article “Tasty, and Subversive, Too” by PATRICIA LEIGH BROWNHERE

BANANA HOTLINE

a participatory project by Fallen Fruit / David Allen Burns and Austin Young, commissioned by Ted Active, 2013

Instructions (read Carefully)

Hold the banana.
Close Your eyes.
Center yourself.
As you connect with the banana allow a question,
a childhood memory, personal story, dream,
feeling, wish or request to come to mind.
Take a deep breath and press record.

Banana Hotline will translate our voices
into a living monument of sound.

ps. If you ask the banana a question,
your answer will come by morning.
Be prepared with pen and paper
and share your answers.

send us a link to your sound or video files or mail to [email protected]

Read about our project at TED Active 2013

Public Fruit Tree Adoptions, public participatory project, 2007 – ongoing

Working with a variety of donors or organizations like TreePeople and civic groups, Fallen Fruit distributes free bare-root fruit trees in a variety of urban settings.  We encourage the planting of these trees in either public space or on the periphery of private property, in order to create new kinds of communal life based on generosity and sharing.  Each recipient signs an adoption form promising to care for the tree — initiating a relationship with it.

Fruit Tree Adoptions

Fruit Machine, video, variable configuration, 2009 – ongoing

Fruit Machine is an ongoing project of ours in which we videotape teenagers (age 12 to 17) eating a variety of fruits. From apples to oranges, to bananas and pears. It is a study in how we actually eat fruit, the portraits range from graceful to awkward and comical, as the teenagers navigate what they quickly come to realize is a not-so-simple task. Eating gracefully is not something that comes naturally and in some cases is impossible without the use of plates and utensils. The teenagers have shown a lot of fun and creativity in the photographs, some even thought to bite the peel rather than pick at it!

The presentation of this project of course was heavily inspired by slot machines (like those a trusted slot agent malaysia has to offer would know plenty about) or fruit machines as they’re often called because of their penchant to use fruit symbols. Three matching fruits in a horizontal row means a payout for the lucky player to get them. Slot machines are found everywhere in our lives, from the corner of the local pub to online sites such as mega888, featuring vivid colours and bright lights, which you will find in the composition of our photographs.

The videos are screened in configurations of 3 to 5 in a row in order to resemble a slot machine (whose windows often use fruit as symbols). Each video portrait runs for about 30 seconds then spins to another, in hopes that all the windows will align to the same fruit: the jackpot!

solo exhibition, 2010

Drawing on the museum’s permanent collection, The Fruit of LACMA assembled work in several media (painting, photography, and decorative arts) to examine the haunting persistence of fruit in art. This exhibition examines the symbolic and sociological aspects of fruit in art, from religious symbolism to embedded social messages. Drawing on the museum’s permanent collection, The Fruit of LACMA assembled work in several media (painting, photography, and decorative arts) to examine the haunting persistence of fruit in art. This exhibition examines the symbolic and sociological aspects of fruit in art, from religious symbolism to embedded social messages. It includes a LACMA-commissioned piece from Fallen Fruit, as well as custom-designed wallpaper. The website for EATLACMA was participatory and integrated into the overall project, collecting videos, tweets, artist’s blogs and images. It includes a LACMA-commissioned piece from Fallen Fruit, as well as custom-designed wallpaper.  The website for EATLACMA was participatory and integrated into the overall project, collecting videos, tweets, artist’s blogs and images.

American Family, giclee print, 40” x 60”, 2008

A large format, composited digital photograph re-staging Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa as an inquiry on the state of the American family, especially in regard to the food they eat – reflecting issues brought up by writers such as Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.   The image has four characters standing in for the figures in Gericault’s painting, looking towards the horizon for rescue.  In Gericault they have their backs to the viewer; here the parents and the children look past the viewer for hope and perhaps rescue from an unknown agent, perhaps the government, the world, or the spectator.