This Artist Rides Train Pretending To Sleep On Strangers

This Artist Rides Train Pretending To Sleep On Strangers. Their Reactions Are Telling.

It makes you wonder …

We’ve all been there — sitting comfy on that orange plastic bench, earphones blasting some old tune, occasionally staring at the person sitting across the aisle or that family with three crying kids in the back of the train. A normal commute, wouldn’t you agree?

Then all of a sudden, the door opens, a new wave of people rushes in, someone takes the empty spot next to you and … five minutes into the ride and they’re resting their head on your shoulder as if it was a pillow.

What do you do? Do you just shake ’em off or let them drool all over you?

To explore people’s behaviours when faced with a situation like this, New York City-based artist George Ferrandi came up with a little experiment.

In her ongoing project ‘It Felt Like I Knew You,’ Ferrandi pretends to fall asleep on fellow commuters while her associate sitting across the aisle captures their reactions.

The scope of people’s reactions ranges from indifferent to sensitive to completely appalled. When you think about it, doesn’t this simple act say a lot about the person?

Ferrandi says her project is not about invading people’s private space, but rather re-sculpting it from ‘stiff and guarded’ area between strangers to ‘soft and yielding space between friends.’

The artist told the Huffington Post that she chose the subway as the platform for her experiment because of its ability to make people feel lonely in a crowd.

Ferrandi says the project taught her to be more generous and open toward fellow commuters. But it also showed her that society still carries many preconceptions about privacy and interaction between strangers.