Connecting Over Missed Connections: a talk by New York artist Ingrid Burrington

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner and as stores start to stock up with flowers, hearts and chocolate boxes, we are constantly reminded that love is in the air. For some, though, this holiday can evoke feelings of loneliness and unhappiness. Feeling like we are missing out on this sort of love connection is at the core of Ingrid Burrington’s Center for Missed Connections project, which maps and studies loneliness and romantic longing in cities through the missed connections section of Craigslist. The day before Valentine’s Day, join Franklin Street Works on Thursday, February 13th from 6:30 – 8:00 pm for “Connecting Over Missed Connections,” a conversation with New York-based artist, Ingrid Burrington. For the talk, Burrington will discuss her Center For Missed Communications project and we will collectively embrace “loneliness,” the longing, poetic and banal, within public spaces. Please join us for this free, public event that also includes light snacks and a signature valentines day drink.

The Center For Missed Connections project started with Burrington’s simple question, “What is the loneliest place in New York City?” As she started to do research, the missed connections sections of Craigslist seemed to be the perfect place to start. This section, exclusive to Craigslist, is a common zone of loneliness in print that is also a free-for-all dialogue of venting, longing, and spamming. Burrington explains, “Analysis of Craigslist Missed Connections postings and communities offers a glimpse into the loneliness and sexual tension that serve as the linchpin of any thriving metropolitan environment.”

Ingrid Burrington’s Taxonomy of Missed Connections, part of Center for Missed Connections, is a mapping of missed connections in New York City, and is currently on view in Franklin Street Works’ Neuromast: Certain Uncertainty and Contemporary Art show. The exhibition, curated by Taliesen Gilkes-Bower and Terri C Smith, is on view through March 9. The show explores “emergence,” the theory that says unforeseeable results happen when a system reaches a certain level of complexity. Exhibiting artists are: Kari Altmann, Christian Bök and Micah Lexier, Ingrid Burrington, Kaye Cain-Nielsen, Mircea Cantor, hint.fm, David Horvitz, Brian House and Jason Rabie, Juliana Huxtable, Thilde Jensen, Carolyn Lazard, M. M. Mantua, Preemptive Media, Robert Spahr, Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Sexecology collaboration, and The Waterwhisper Ilse.