Paggank Daywaygun by Max Kazemzadeh and Reza Safavi

Paggank means “Island of Nuts” in the Munsee Dialect of the Lenni Lenape Native American language, which was the original name for Governors Island (due most likely to all of the walnut and chestnut trees found there), and “daywaygun” means “drum” or “drum sound.” As in each of my custom French-Situationist-inspired artworks, “PagDay(‘17)” invites participants to navigate the space of Governors Island, highlighting elements of navigational chance in order for the participants, (those who access the cell phone app) to experience the island outside of their own control, directing them around the island with little games and tasks, in order for each to have a different experience of the island, while remotely generating a physical byproduct, or action, in another location or “exhibition space.” In the 1960’s, with the emergence of “performance art” and art “happenings,” the French Situationists experimented with numerous rules for navigating Paris with the goal of breaking from their daily routine in order to re-experience Paris from new perspectives, and finding innovative ways to document those experiences.