As part of her excellent current show at the Serpentine Gallery, in London, Yoko Ono has set up a couple of 'wish trees' outside. You are asked to write a wish onto a tag and then tie it on any of the trees. There was a breeze when my family and I did it, so all the wishes were fluttering in the wind. Beautiful. Everybody was also reading everybody else's wishes. Some were straightforward. Some abstract. Some very sad. Somebody's very sad one had fallen to the ground - I hope it wasn't an omen.
And inside the show, you find Yoko Ono's Smiles Film project. You sit and get your picture taken while you're smiling and it gets loaded up into her Smiles Film archive of people smiling. The other year at the Serpentine, I had my heartbeat recorded for Christian Boltanski's Archive of Heartbeats project. First my heartbeat for Boltanski. Now my smile for Yoko. What next at the Serpentine? And for who?
Moments after you have your picture taken, you see the result on a large screen. It was interesting hearing lots of people say they didn't want to do it because it was too personal. I think it's a lovely project and I couldn't wait to take part. I haven't seen my smile picture on Flickr yet. I hope Yoko achieves her goal of collecting a photo of every person in the world smiling.
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