Cue the Twilight Zone musical introduction: Two Brooklyn artists, Hayden Dunham and Meriem Bennani, are fashioning themselves into messengers from a parallel universe. Their new project, “Other Travel,” aims to deliver objects to a roster of artists and writers, ostensibly from the creatives’ mirror selves in the “other” world. “Each artist involved will receive an invitation to a specific place in New York City where the delivery of an installation or package will take place,” Dunham and Bennani explain by way of the project’s Kickstarter. “The collaboration begins when the artist chooses to produce a piece in response to the installation received.”
From the looks of the mediums’ first Brooklyn delivery to artist Amy von Harrington, Other Travel exists somewhere in the realm between fantasy and deadpan comedy. Dunham and Bennani designate von Harrington’s “Other” as a baton twirler and sweat collector in the parallel universe, so von Harrington is given an outfit soaked in her Other’s magical sweat. Psycho-spiritual dancing and the gradual closing of the portal follow while others pass the ritual on the sidewalk.
As evidenced by the videos (watch below), Other Travel invites the viewer to a vision of another, muted, alien world—and a proposal for other artists to create, building up from imaginations of its creators. Dunham, a designer featured in Brooklyn Magazine and Vice, brings her singular tone to the costumes, while Bennani expresses Otherness through video and animation. Each new artist collaboration gets a feature in what will become the Other Travel book, and will eventually culminate in an exhibition. To support Other Travel, check out their Kickstarter here.