While I was installing this, a friendly and chatty elderly lady came up behind me, and asked- well, more stated: “Changing the ads?” I replied- “Yes, I’m putting something new in.”

I produce these works on the backsides of… upcycled adverts. (I really enjoy the idea that I am literally “flipping it” on these ads) When I unrolled the poster, the original ad, an promotion for a dating service for young Jewish professionals, came out face-up.

“How nice!” the friendly lady said. “I’m Jewish, you know. Are you? I survived the war, you know. Well, I was in England. We were being bombed, the blitz you know.”

I was trying to be very respectful, but as we chatted about the war, I continued with the install. I was nervous about how her mood might change when the time came to reveal the fact that I wasn’t here to help nice, young, attractive Jewish professionals find love and get married. It doesn’t take long to install one of these, so that time came very quickly. When the new poster was revealed, she stopped midsentence and said—“what’s this?”

I explained: “Well, you see, my girlfriend has a rather small bladder, and I didn’t appreciate the lack of available public bathrooms until spending time in New York with her. It’s very hard to find any washrooms, and it sometimes feels like we are just going from one search to another…”

As I’m talking she’s staring straight ahead and very intently at the poster, brow furrowed, and nodding her head slowly. I can’t read her emotions, so I continue: “And people, well, men mostly, are always peeing in these phone booths. They often are so stinky that I can’t imagine anyone being able to use them, so I’m trying to suggest a change. Solve two problems. We need more bathrooms. Sometimes my girlfriend has to hold it for hours, until it’s painful-”

At this point, she turns to me, still looking very serious, and says “-And when you get to be my age, sometimes you can’t!”

Turning back to the poster, she points her finger at it, and shaking her arm, says: “I like this. I can get behind this. I like this.”

I think she realized at this point that I wasn’t just a nice young Jewish man working for an advertising company, but someone doing something that I’m not supposed to: she began to leave, and as she left, she smiled at me, and said- “Good Luck!”