Public intervention

All Nighter was a 12-hour crochet intervention in a UC Berkeley library centered around social conventions of public space and work. I wanted to know what would happen if I removed an expected action in a particular space and then replaced it with an unexpected one. I addressed this question by simulating an all-night study session where, instead of studying, I crocheted circles of yarn. Through performance, the university library became activated in a way that challenged its functionality. Designed to take place over twelve hours (8:30pm—8:30am), All Nighter questioned the institutional roles of the library space as well as higher education. By crocheting the same simple object based on a standard per-hour quota, the action itself is banal and repetitive, therefore analogous to the actions of studying, writing, and reading—the adjectives particularly describing the experience of an “all-nighter”.