I sit down at a restaurant. I take a salt shaker from the table and put it in my pocket, stealing it for either a moment or much longer depending on your view. I reach in my jacket and take out another shaker, which I took from the last restaurant I visited. I put in it the place of the first.
This gesture like many of my experiments are about the importance of the action. The simplicity of moving two objects. Nothing lost. Nothing gained. All that is taken is a photo, evidence of a physical movement.
The photographs show a odd couple, salt and pepper shakers, sitting together. They sit on the table the way visitors at the restaurant would, by themselves surrounded by a crowd of others. When one goes to a restaurant they are not going merely for the food, but to shortly rent a piece of social space. The table at a restaurant is a privately owned space. It exists in a public setting, but is used for a private purpose. Rarely does one go to a restaurant to meet or talk to strangers, but to be alone with their own company. Through my social experiment each pairing ties the customer with someone else who sat at a different restaurant. If only by ideology I am bring strangers together.
Salt
