"Love Story"--An audio walking tour, gallery performance, and photographic essay

6pm Saturday April 14; 2pm Sunday, April 15. An audio walking tour, gallery performance, and photographic essay, Love Story sees a city's hidden corners through a nearly-invisible citizen's eyes. The work begins as a downloadable .mp3 file and a map and ends as a monologue in a gallery, surrounded by half-obscured pictures. Surprises, linguistic tics, and essential mysteries ensue. Love Story superimposes New York onto Austin, and features a collaboration with Austin photographer Cory Ryan.

Viewers begin by printing a Google map of an area of Austin near the Else Madsen Gallery, and downloading an .mp3 file on which a man introduces himself in a halting voice. As they follow the route outlined on the map, they hear the man’s introduction: "You've seen me around," he says. "I've probably listened in on you talking to someone, saying something you didn't think anyone else would hear, but you didn't notice me." Later, he describes watching a couple’s engagement at a Greek restaurant, and his desire to know them further. The .mp3 and walking tour end at the gallery, just as things start to get juicy.

Inside the gallery, a second man reads excerpts from the man’s journals, slowly piecing together an alternately heartwarming and harrowing series of events and descriptions. By the end of the performance, he and the recorded voice have become one sound, mirror opposites of each other’s fate.

Love Story is inspired by installation artist like Janet Cardiff, by writers from Jonathan Lethem to Joseph Mitchell who chronicle the city's neglected corners, by site-specific performances from artists Ann Carlson, David Hancock and Richard Maxwell, and by two autistic adults who I've known since childhood.