The Tripod

Issue date: 2/17/03 Section: Arts

Last Monday, as you hurried through the cold and snow to get into the warmth of Mather, the only thought in your head revolving around the ice cream bar and the legal limit of hot fudge sauce consumption, you were confronted by a strange sight. Sitting in front of Mather was a student, one Kevin Keating '05, dressed in only a t-shirt with the magic marker letters ELM printed across it, a pair of shorts, and sandals without socks. On the chair next to him was taped the sign: "Feel Free to Add or Remove Clothing" along with a notebook on the seat of the folding chair for people to write down their thoughts and comments. Next to Keating's feet was a large plastic bag full of various items of clothing from hats to socks, sweatshirts, and shorts, to a blue and gold Trinity pompom and a long strand of red tinsel. While he sat, near naked in the falling snow, he continuously sang the Trinity anthem: "'Neath The Elms" (also the title of Keating's piece).

While you were planning to follow your daily routine of a Mather lunch, Keating was sitting in front of the doors of that routine, challenging you to break out of it, challenging you to think - even if it was just to think 'what is this wacko doing out in the cold?' - and challenging you to do something, to do anything. Keating says he sang "'Neath the Elms" as part of his piece "to show a connection to Trinity and show how doing something to him personally (by either adding or removing clothes) paralleled doing or not doing something to Trinity. It wasn't purely a piece for the Trinity community; it was a challenge to the art community to act, to do something."

By interrupting the flow of everyday life, Keating was conducting an experiment in Trinity apathy, a quality this campus has been increasingly accused of in the past few years. Faced with a man half dressed in the cold, would the Trinity community come to his aid? Even if that meant pulling a sweatshirt over the head of a stranger? In the hour that Keating sat in front of Mather, he elicited a wide variety of responses. Keating observed: "The majority of the responses were pretty positive. A fair amount of people seemed concerned and tried to keep me warm. Some people laughed, others obviously were made uncomfortable by the piece, and others were entirely disinterested in their hurry to get to lunch. One very negative response which was incredible and made the piece worth performing was when this group of guys walked by into Mather laughing and one person in the group grabbed the hat off my head and threw it on the ground laughing. The thing that I loved about the response, as negative as it was, was that the person was moved to do something."

Keating, the leader of the ELM (Energy-Life-Matter) Collective and author of the ELM Manifesto (published in last week's Tripod), is on a mission to get people to 'do something.' The ELM Manifesto was a challenge to the artists of the Trinity community to put themselves out there and bring art out of the theaters and galleries and into the public. His manifesto has been gaining support throughout the artistic community, with many professors in the arts vocally supporting his movement, and a few offering their talents to work on future collaborations with the ELM Collective.

With this great momentum of support behind him, Keating assures us that "'Neath The Elms" is only the first drop in a long wave of art pieces to come out of the ELM Collective.

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