Favourite things change their appearance during the course of life, they tell stories, and provide accounts about the past and the future. The things that people like the most, say a lot about the owner, the same applies to the things that people don’t like at all. And the reasons for it? Sometimes they are revealed at first sight, in other cases, they perhaps remain a puzzle even to their owner. Do children see things differently? Knowing the favourite things of someone else creates familiarity.
The children bring in an object from home, which they like having the most, and another, which they like the least. They tell each other the “personal history“ of the object, and write it down. The object is photographed and extracted on the computer. The contoured, 30X43cm prints on transparency would be cut out and laminated. The objects are hung in the space above the heads as a mobile. Using their own objects, and those of their classmates, the children develop stories, which are staged in the rooms of the new school. The documenting photos are presented along with the corresponding text. For each favourite thing, an object is invented, which is useful for this thing or object and protects it. The children would interview each other about their objects and photograph them with it.






In addition, people passing by on the street are also to be interviewed with regards to: favourite colour, favourite food, favourite place, favourite person, favourite word, favourite clothing, favourite experience, favourite TV channel, favourite characteristic etc…The entire topic of private/personal would thus be brought into the public, and put in relation to the preferences of fellow humans..

The children photograph details of their objects – the others guess which object the photo belongs to. The objects are combined in new contexts on the computer. Prints of all the objects are cut into parts and re-assembled as “class favourite things” and “class hate things”.

This is a lot, and I assume that we will not „manage“ to do all of it – it is also not necessary too. I do not know how fast the children work, and would rather have a few ideas to fall back on, than to have too few. The plan then, is to accent the lightness and brightness of the hallway with light-permeable objects and to hang the corresponding photos with the texts on the wall.
The project’s teaching staff, and the accompanying researchers agreed with the concept.

Then, one week before the beginning there was a discussion with the school principal: He has objections due to fire safety regulations – laminated transparencies are therefore not possible, additionally all objects have to be outside of reach. And anyways, it hasn’t even been arranged with him that something is to be installed in the hallway.
And now?
The dates with the students had been set, there would be eight days in the next week, and the one after that. The following days, I spend searching for alternatives, and informing myself about flame retardant materials, which are meant for indoors. One possibility seems to be double polycarbonate plates; only, they are so massive that it is not possible to work with them quickly and without complication. The teacher suggests, sawing them in the workshop with the children. The next day I took a look at the available fretsaws at the school, it becomes clear to me that this work would be way too laborious.