in my agenda: the name, josh, an arrow, the time, 17:30 – 18:30. then the words, parc bernard – st-viateur hutchison. the times and the names of the street i copied from the lost/found section of the classifieds in the mirroir. joshua schwebel was hiding in public space and he had announced the locations and times in the lost/found sections of the classifieds.
the locations were announced with the dates, time and place. no « thing » or « person » was listed as « lost. » this was not a game of hide and seek. but on the day i went looking for josh (as an informed « insider » as to the nature of what the lost/found referred to) i did not know if i would find josh, or indeed if he was even hiding. i set off on my bike looking for parc bernard, somewhere between st-viateur and hutchison. after doing the turn of the block i decided to ask a young girl if she knew where parc bernard was. or if there was even a park nearby. she informed me (with an air of exasperation) that parc was the name of a street and so was bernard, and no…there was no parc bernard nearby. (uh..huh adomished by a twelve-year old).
so now on the right path and no longer looking for a park i set out searching for josh, paying attention to door-wells and spaces between buildings and little nooks. my eye caught a movement, i looked up, and …there was josh! i was completely unprepared for the joy finding josh gave me. i was like a kid who had found a lost treasure, or had won the race. i didn’t say, « you’re it » and tag josh, but that was about how mature i felt at that moment. grinning like an idiot i went over and i think i asked josh if he would come down (so i could take him for a coffee and we could have a serious chat about the implications of his project…) luckily for me, josh said no, he still had forty minutes or so to go.
so i went over to the other side of the street and « spied » on josh to see if anyone else would take note of him.
this account, of me looking for, and finding josh doesn’t really give you an idea of his true work. the goal is not to be found by a grinning « insider. » in fact, the work functions for, or is aimed towards those, who are « not in the know. » 
it is about performing an action that stands outside the « norm, » but just enough so the line demarcating acceptability and non acceptability is shaken.
on this day (every day was unique) i observed one person, a man locking his bike to the sign post, noticing josh’s presence. i thought he spoke to josh, but apparently (i learned later) this was not true. other than this man, josh told me one other person, a young child, noticed him. this lack of interaction was probably because of the location…above eye-level.
you could judge this work as ineffective, as futile. the performer announces the work, but no-one knows « what » he is announcing. he hides, but on certain days, « no-one » sees him, and if people do take note, they don’t know the « true nature » of what it is he is doing. he then takes a photo of the location he was hiding in and encloses the photo in a white envelope and pins the envelope onto a wall in a gallery, but no-one knows what the photo refers to. he doesn’t point out the location of his hiding « spot. »
the « futility » of the work seems pretty apparent. i am sure the twelve year-old girl who told me parc was a street would pick up on this right away, and she would be right. this futility is the work. the impossibility of producing a result. the signs and the actions point but do not lead beyond the pure « fact » of what it is they are pointing to. this is the name of a street in the lost/found section of the weekly paper. period. this is a body hiding on the ledge above the awning to a store. period. this is a photo of a place in an envelope pinned to a gallery wall. period.
but performing futility? working to produce the futile? no. lets shake those lines of demarcation between what we consider useful and what we don’t, what we consider proper and what we don’t, what we spend out time doing and what we don’t even dare to consider.
