What is a stranger?

Written By Mary Bibbey

Welcome to our very first online exhibition!

This page is a collection of all submissions to exploration #1: “What is a stranger?”. If you submitted something, thank you for entrusting us with your time and for being open to this adventure! We hope you enjoyed reflecting on this question.

We invite you to engage with these entries by leaving a comment at the bottom of the page. Tell us what resonated or surprised you or share anything that comes to mind.

If you have any ideas or thoughts about how we might display submissions in the future… Let us know!

<3

Mary & Ilaria

Reflections:

01 - Anonymous

“Stranger is my sister, stranger is my brother, my friend, sometimes myself. If we could open our heart and hug for more than 3 seconds we can probably understand that a stranger is our partner in the voyage on this earth.”

  • i’m currently on a plane, on my way to the netherlands. i’ve never been and i’m really excited. i’m visiting a very dear friend who’s in erasmus and who’s having so much fun over there. tomorrow we’re going to amsterdam and i cant even put into words how thrilled i am. i’ve always seen amsterdam in movies, like the one that we were once so obsessed with when we were teenagers, “the fault in our stars”. i’ve also always seen many pictures all over the internet of the city, but again, i had never had the opportunity to visit it. now the time has finally come and i really cannot contain my excitement!

    next to me there’s a man, he’s fallen asleep in a very uncomfortable position. i mean, to me it doesn’t really look comfortable, but maybe it is. i wonder why he’s going to eindhoven (which is the city where we’re landing). work? visiting someone like i am? a vacation?

    behind me there there’s a very blond girl, whose cheeks are super red. she must be from the netherlands. maybe she’s going back home. that means that she just visited bologna, my city. i wonder if she enjoyed it or if she hated it and will never come back.

    on the line to get on the plane there was a group of four italian women who were all wearing a veil on their heads. one was a bride to be and the other ones were her friends. that must mean that they’re going to the netherlands to celebrate her bachelorette party. i wonder how much fun they will have. they will probably drink a lot and go partying. or not.. maybe they have a different way of having fun. they all look in their 40s, so who knows..

    i also saw a group of young guys, more or less of my age. one of them was cute! they’re definitely going over there to have some fun. or maybe they’re studying there?

    i wonder why all the people on this plane are headed to eindhoven. there could be hundreds of reasons.

    sometimes, when i see a stranger, i tend to start wondering about how their day is going, if they’re a having a great day or a very shitty one. i wonder in what mood they are, if it’s just a day like another or if it’s a special one for them. where are they headed? what do they do for a living? do they have a family? are their parents still alive or have they experienced an hard loss? what’s their character like? if i just stop for a second and look at a person, i wonder all these things.

    and i always come to the realization of how beautiful it is that we’re all living on the same planet and that we all have our own different lives that in certain occasions get intertwined. sometimes we’re meant to meet someone who is going to be important for us, someone who will be our best friend, our girlfriend, our husband or whatever else. a stranger can become a fundamental part in our lives. and maybe go back to being a stranger. there’s a beautiful song by the singer celeste that says “isn’t it strange, how people can change, from strangers to friends, friends into lovers and strangers again?”. i think that this is a beautiful quote that portrays the process that any type of relationship can go through. because in life everything can change.

    strangers are people who can change our lives for the better or for the worse but that, in any case, is always gonna add something in our lives that is gonna help us evolve into who we’re meant to be. we’re all experiencing life at the same time and being able to share it with other people is something beautiful.

    i really hope to meet other strangers.

    — Rama Diop

  • The question have you had an encounter with a stranger that has left a lasting impression is very interesting when i examine it through the lens of my job.

    As a nurse, we walk into the unit and we are assigned a group of usually four patients that we need to try to learn as much about as possible for a twelve hour shift. we read up on them on the computer and listen to our co-workers give report. and everyone always has opinions on these people we do not even really know (why they got sick, what lead them to this situation, etc) and we learn so many small intimate details about their lives that some of their closest friends and family may not even know.

    From the patients point of view, depending on the staff and how often people work, they have a new STRANGER walk into their room, already knowing so many details about their lives as we poke and prod at them. when i think of it that way, it feels like an intrusion of sorts. i think a lot of the time, we as medical staff feel like we have the right to have opinions on our patients medical care, when they are strangers to us and us to them.

    Of course that is only a portion of the truth, as we develop relationships with our patients and learn about each other. i end up telling patients things about myself that i haven’t necessarily told many other people in my life. we have patients who we see for multiple hospitalizations over the course of years and some we see for two hours.

    It is strange being a nurse, we ask patients for details of their lives that i could never imagine asking someone i’m sitting next to on the bus, even though at the beginning of my shift, my acquaintance with a patient is the same as a person i’ve never met on the bus. but many of my patients have had huge impacts on my morals and how i view the world and share insights i could never think of myself.

    SO i am the stranger caring for them and they are the strangers who largely guide how i walk in and think in this world.

  • Stranger:

    A person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar.

    A person who does not know, or is not known in, a particular place or community.

    (Oxford English Dictionary)

    —

    It’s odd to begin to conceptualize another human as unfamiliar. On some level we’re all familiar to one another, or at least, we could be with a certain orientation towards the world. Often as I walk around my college campus past people I haven’t had the chance to meet yet, I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t pass by staring straight on past one another or frantically looking away in the occasional moments of eye contact. What if instead we said hello to those we crossed paths with.

    Of course, you may not consider such people to be strangers in the first place. Students on a college campus are in community with one another, perhaps rendering them not strangers based on Oxford’s definition. Yet, even those who are part of our communities, yet those who we do not know personally, we treat as strangers.

    This orientation towards total strangers and strangers in community, we can collect, is rooted in fear. As a kid I was taught to avoid speaking with strangers. “Stranger danger.” It’s a particularly fearful, individualistic orientation towards the world that was driven into me at a young age; a necessary orientation based on the realities of living in a society that values individualism and personal freedom at the expense of values like community, responsibility, and reciprocity.

    It’s also a particularly human-centric orientation. When we speak of strangers, we think of humans. What about non-human strangers? We fear bears as we do human strangers but not tulips. Not dogs. Even those we don’t know, we don’t fear, unless they’re huge and snarling at us. But that we’re supposed to fear, that’s biological. We don’t have to learn to be afraid of a snarling dog in the same way we must learn to fear other humans. That’s not biological. That’s a societal condition.

    So, what is a stranger? Someone new and exciting, with their own world of possibilities within and without. Recognizing that the very word “stranger” contains a certain orientation in its modern usage, the idea can be beautiful, nonetheless. What if we try to approach “strangers”

  • I haven’t put much thought into the meaning of the term stranger until now. What sticks with me most while I ponder this idea is how different people in our lives can at one point be our closest friends or intimate connections, and then one day they are unknown- they are effectively strangers to us. It can be a profound shift- someone who once knew every small detail in your life, who knew how you were feeling in a given moment or could predict what you would say next, is suddenly just a random person passing on the street- living a life barely recognizable to you. How can a shift like that happen? What would happen if you met again, in another part of life? Would it be as if you had never met? Or would there always be that invisible string holding you together?

    In a similar way, I find it mind-boggling that there are people- complete strangers- who will one day mean everything to you, who you will know so intimately, and think “how did I not meet this person sooner?”. We also live our lives knowing there are millions of people out there who will remain strangers to us forever, and we will always wonder ‘what if?’

    I can think of many instances where a stranger has left a lasting impression; I have learned a great deal from people that I only knew for that brief second in passing. I have always been fascinated by people and interpersonal dynamics and what we can each learn from people who are strangers to us- people from different backgrounds, with different stories and perspectives than our own. It’s also why I love movies and books, as you can live vicariously through the characters, who are strangers to you at first, but who have the capacity to change the way you look at the world, other people, and yourself.

  • I don’t believe there is any one type of stranger. That is what is so strange about the term. Initially, when you hear “stranger” you conjure up an image of someone you do not know; however, I would argue that there are people in all our lives who we do know, yet, they are strangers to us. I most recently thought about this in the context of an ex-boyfriend. There was a point where I knew him quite well, but I don’t anymore. I am not sure how much time has to pass for someone who we once knew to revert to being a stranger. Weeks? Months? Years? Maybe regaining a “stranger status” is contingent upon memory. Do you still remember her birthday? Do you still know his middle name? When a person becomes more unknown to you than known, have they become a stranger (again)?

    I suppose a stranger is the initial state that we’re all in. When you enter this world, you are a stranger to everyone and everything. Only as time passes does does the strangeness of the world dissipate because the world becomes less “strange” — less unfamiliar — to you. But time works in the opposite direction too. Think about family, friends, and/or lovers: you meet the person as a stranger, time brings you closer together, and then two things can happen. Either, time pulls you farther apart, that person leaves your life, and reverts to becoming a stranger; or, you and person break free of the “stranger default setting” and they become forever known to you.

    A stranger is someone who gets wrapped into the cyclical pattern of time. That’s it. I’ve had all these thoughts in my head for the past couple of weeks, but that’s the crux of what I think a stranger is. If one submits to the natural state of time, I would argue that with any relationship, there is the pattern of “stranger —> unbecoming a stranger —> re-becoming a stranger.” It’s almost formulaic, but not completely because there are (arguably) rare instances where the “unbecoming” stage can last indefinitely. Most people, however, will become a stranger again because of the transitory nature of life. I think this is especially true of people in their twenties. Maybe the only people who will never become strangers are the people who we intentionally choose to break the cycle of time. We force them to move with us as we move through life. It is far easier to fall out of touch (or love) with people than it is to stay with them because no two people’s lives are parallel. Every individual experiences a different form of life — that’s what makes us individuals. I moved to a new city about a year ago. Over the past twelve months, I have gone through every “stranger” stage with people in just my immediate circle — and that’s okay. I am grappling with the fact that as adults, most relationships are transitory and there is nothing wrong with that. Strangers come in and out of our lives constantly. It may be the only constant in life.

    To whoever is reading this now, I am a little less of a stranger to you than I was when you started reading. Maybe we’re all just trying to be a little less strange in the hopes that one day, we can break the “stranger cycle” and become known.”

    — Reflection by T.S.

  • A stranger is something potentially, it is possibility, hope, worlds to explore, new opportunities to tell one's story and recognize oneself again and again.

 

Creations:

In no particular order may I present to you a collection of all sorts of media— audio, video, graphic design, collage… ;)

01 — Perrin & Johnny (from the sky)

02 — LA LIBERTÁ DELLO STRANIERO — Sinbad Blan (Bologna, Italy)

  • Parlo di cosa significa per me sentirsi straniero e di quanto sia prezioso percepirlo, di tanto in tanto. 

    Lo ho trovato due modi: viaggiare o vivere in città; sul perché viaggiando ci si senta stranieri non sto qui a dirlo. Invece per la città forse è meno scontato. 

    Una grande e vivace città come Bologna, per sua conformazione, è un luogo di stranieri, luogo di estranei. Migliaia di persone che si incontrano e che non si rivolgono neanche un occhiata, a meno di un qualche particolare stravagante. Un luogo in cui puoi camminare per settimane e ogni giorno scoprirai dettagli mai visti, un negozio o un pub in cui spenderai decine di ore e quando ti sarai stufato, basterà fare un piccolo giro nei paraggi per rendersi nuovamente conto di sapere ben poco del luogo in cui stai vivendo.

    Per chi è cresciuto in città questo è un evento normale, quasi noioso. Per chi invece è nato e vissuto in un piccolo paese questo è un fatto straordinario, nuovo, magico. 

    Perché in un borgo si ha l' impressione dell' immobilità, che tutto sia già visto, già sentito, già provato. Niente è estraneo, e tu, facendone parte, non lo sarai a tua volta.

    Ecco che la città è invece il luogo in cui diventando stranieri ci si può sentire più liberi, lontani dagli occhi e giudizi altrui, pur paradossalmente essendolo meno che in un piccolo borgo in cui lo spazio d'azione dovrebbe essere maggiore.

  • Let me talk about what it means for me to feel like a stranger and how valuable it is to perceive it from time to time.

    I’ve found two ways: traveling or living in cities; I wont delve into why traveling makes you feel like a stranger. Instead, for living in the city, perhaps it’s less obvious.

    A big and lively city like Bologna, by its very nature, is a place of strangers, a place of foreigners. Thousands of people  meet and don’t even glance at each other, unless there is something particularly unusual. It’s a place where you can walk for weeks and every day you’ll discover some unseen details, a shop or a pub where you’ll spend dozens of hours and when you’re tired of it, just stepping outside to take a little walk around will be enough to realize once again how little you know about the place you’re living in.

    For those who grew up in the city, this is a normal, almost boring event. For those who were born and raised in a small town this is an extraordinary, new, magical fact.

    Because in a small village, there’s a sense of immobility, that everything has already been seen,  heard,  and experienced. Nothing is foreign, and you, being a part of it, won’t be either.

    Here, the city is instead the place where becoming strangers can make you feel more free, distant from the eyes and judgments of others, even though paradoxically we are less so than in a small village where the scope for action should be greater.

03 — “To Share Space and Nothing Else—on what does it mean to be a stranger” — Priyanka Dangol (Arlington, Virginia)

Collage on paper, sharpie, muji 0.5, actual printed boarding passes :o

dangol.priyanka@gmail.com

 

04 — Are we estranged from who we’re becoming? — Mary Bibbey (Washington, D.C.)

  • When I go through a big life change or move somewhere new, I feel like I’m meeting myself, newly.

    There’s a version of me to discover in every place I go or person I meet.

    Who am I going to be here?
    What’s this place or person gonna pull out of me?

    When I moved to DC I didn’t know the answer to this question...
    I’m still learning what kind of shoes this place calls me to fill.

    Friend groups shuffled,
    new faces now familiar,
    Drop pins turned to drop ins,
    How long until I’m a local?

    My expectations of this place
    were a fickle foundation
    This city has much to show.
    I had my assumptions
    My story was formed
    about its very MO.

    There are coffee shops,
    Circles to sit,
    Places to reflect,
    Or hide for a bit.

    Timelines elusive,
    There’s meaning to be made,
    I’m the driver of this journey
    Whether finding light,
    or seeking shade.

    Am I estranged from who I’m becoming?

    I’m starting to think
    That we see what we seek
    So I’ll embrace this journey
    Before it’s gone in a blink
    And...

    Maybe the place is a canvas
    And our presence the imprint?

    Maybe it’s in the lack or abundance i see
    That my compass grows more attuned to me...

    So where there’s a void
    I’ll be called to fill
    And where its rich
    I’ll stand real still..

    And if that’s the case,
    I’ll face it all.
    Because it’s hand in MY change
    Is a welcomed call.

    I am a stranger to who I’m becoming.

    I wonder who she will be.

 

05 — Clichés about strangers (Bologna, Italy)

 

06 — Antonia Ivanova (Bologna, Italy)

The concept of a stranger is a human invention. Man invented the concept of known and unknown. If we go back a little in time and look at our childhood, we again find concepts that were often implanted as truth by strangers. The social environment is no different. We are taught to be polite to strangers and open to those close to us. All these are concepts that are part of the human need for symbols and stories to refer to, concepts that place and frame reality.

If we look into the mind of a child, we will not find the same ideas that an adult has. What does the child have and what does the adult not have? Freedom. Not freedom as a territorial concept, but rather freedom as a liberated mind free from learned perceptions.

A child is a tabula rasa, as first articulated by John Locke. Tabula rasa refers to the concept of the mind as a blank slate at birth, unaffected by preconceived notions or biases

The freedom of thought, the freedom to communicate without restriction, to attract attention, to play in life, to grieve and show resentment, as is natural to us humans. And if we manage even a little bit to touch our children's soul of indeterminacy and limitlessness, we will stop setting limits and start building bridges.

 

07 — (Bologna, Italy)

 

08 — David Bibbey (Connecticut)

  • When I look in the mirror
    What do I see?
    A stranger’s face looking back at me!

    I curse you for what you reflect upon,
    and curse the time you have taken from
    the youthful spirit and agility,
    that once was the reflection that I would see.

    So here I am plain in view
    I buckle and yield to my reflection’s view
    or steel myself with perspective new
    and create a future, bold and true,
    And shed the shackles of ages weight.

    Let loose the chains,
    let go that fate is predetermined,
    instead it is my choice
    to wither and weaken,
    or raise my voice

    I am the source of what I see.
    I reflect upon what I may be
    and when I blame how I occur,
    upon the circumstances, you may be sure,
    I’ll quickly own responsibility
    and be humbled with humility

    When present to a Love so profound
    Silence is the only sound.

    —

    David Bibbey

09 — “Unnamed” — (Washington, D.C.)

 

10 — “I, Am a stranger” — ila (Bologna, Italy)

 

We’d love your feedback!

Tell us what you liked /disliked about this exploration and or exhibition. For e.g;

  • Were you confused with the task?

  • Did you want more or less reminders?







Mary Bibbey
Previous

What does home mean to you?