UPDATE: Vvinni has posted a detailed analy­sis of his process in cre­at­ing In Fridge on his blog. See it here!

Two days ago I came home from class to dis­cover a mys­te­ri­ous brown pack­age on my bed. It was addressed to me, from Vvinni*, and some­how it made its way into my bed­room with­out my knowl­edge or approval. A bomb, I hope? Fortunately, I was wrong.

I let it sit for a few hours and absorb the essence of my “bed­room” (while wait­ing to see if it would explode), then I zipped off and did a quick tele­vi­sion inter­view. When I returned, how­ever, I knew it would be my duty to open, cat­a­log and dis­sect the con­tents of the box. And that is what I did. Below you can watch along as I pick it apart:

The outer skin of the pack­age was made of brown paper bags. A few quick cuts with a knife revealed a card­board box, plas­tered in red duct tape and with some sort of ransom-note-collage con­sum­ing a cor­ner of it. I imme­di­ately rec­og­nized images of Ralph Nader and Vladimir Putin, and knew that I was in for some sort of ordeal.

Some more slic­ing allowed me to open up the box and peer inside. My eyes were imme­di­ately assaulted by a sea of bright col­ors and com­pli­cated shapes. And part of a fork, for some reason.

These clip­pings were all col­laged onto a card­board base that, with some more cut­ting, gave way to reveal a larger com­part­ment under­neath, and more com­pli­cated shapes.

A smaller, oddly-shaped pack­age was con­tained in this com­part­ment, and cov­ered with the same sort of mag­a­zine clip­pings. The larger box was lined with alu­minum foil and inscribed with the mes­sage “What you Fear is Yourself.” I cut away the foil lin­ing the box. Underneath were approx­i­mately eleven human hairs.

Before I turned my atten­tion to the smaller pack­age, I decided to fur­ther inves­ti­gate the outer box.

The region of the outer box that had been engulfed by this hor­ri­fy­ing col­lage turned out to con­ceal a secret panel, under­neath which were hid­den two note­book pages describ­ing the process by which the pack­age had been cre­ated (read on for the full text).

Then I turned my atten­tion to the oddly-shaped par­cel. To my dis­may, it was notice­ably damp on the bot­tom and smelled vaguely of cab­bage… and some­thing else. I hacked and slashed at it with my trusty knife, open­ing up sev­eral empty com­part­ments before finally arriv­ing at a rec­tan­gu­lar pack­age, wrapped in text describ­ing the Mayan cal­en­dar and its rela­tion­ship to the year 2012.

More cut­ting and the damp wrap­ping was removed, reveal­ing a plas­tic enve­lope inscribed in black ink a sea of trou­bling words that reminded me of the let­ters Charles Manson writes from prison. Other writ­ing on the enve­lope revealed that Vvinni had mailed it to himself.

Inside the bag?

A sin­gle black VHS tape, devoid of any iden­ti­fy­ing marks.

Here is what was on the tape:

Oh, and here is the full text of the note detail­ing his process:

1. Writer Hiezenberg on 1 Netf(?)
2. Write Crime and Punishment on 2 Netflix.
3. Take all prod­ucts from magazine.
4. Boil with Parsley and Lemon
5. Also soap.
6. Place in Bowl for Drying
7. Coat the Box in Aluminum foil. that way they can’t read the information.
8. Put the papers in.
9. Make “In Fridge” and dub to THE TAPE.
10. Repeat Previous steps as needed.
11. Place tape in bag
12. Inscribe bag with Beatles’ Lyrics.
13. Wrap bag in 2012
14. Place “Package” in com­pli­cated Box.
    • Build Complicated Box
15. Boil more Products and words with gar­lic, glue and lemon.
16. Cover the Complicated Box in the paper.
17. Place Paper Mache Complicated Box in larger Box.
18. Cover with Glued Cardboard.
19. Create an I Spy out of Cardboard Cover
20. Close Box, Tape it Shut. Tape it very much.
21. Staple these direc­tions to left­over Cardboard.
22. Secure direc­tions to bot­tom with left­over paper goop.
23. Wait to dry.
24. Wrap in Paper Bag.
25. Inscribe address on top and send.

Needless to say, I will be respond­ing… somehow.

Read more about the mail adventures:

• I Got the Poops
• I Got the Poops [Henceblog]
• In Fridge [Henceblog]

* As an aside, Vvinni appears to have trav­eled back in time from the future in order to com­ment on his own blog posts. We’ll see how that all unfolds.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 am by Andrew and is filed under Filmmaking, Mail Adventures, Personal Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.