Nowadays we live individually, having the right to choose for ourselves without having tocompromise so much. We are “free” to choose and yet remain unhappy. Our purpose in life becomesself-fulfillment; Charles Taylor quoted Nietzche's 'Last men' in his book 'The Ethics of Authenticity'on individualism, "they have no aspiration left in life but to a pitiable comfort."1 Taylor mentionedas one of his malaises toward individualism that people lost the broader vision because they focuson their individual’s life. It "flattens and narrows our lives, make them poorer in meaning, and lessconcerned with others or society"2. He described it as 'Permissive society,' 'Me generation,'Narcissistic'. People now don't have God or King to turn to, even though it seems that we're free tochoose for our “true” self, we find ourselves restricted by economic arrangement, media, childhoodupbringing and so on. Through globalization of the media, we standardize our relationship and ourself. We have certain perception of personal relationships and cannot obtain to that standard. Manypeople desperately seeking for close relationships or to break from this suffering.

‘Can I be with You?’ is a participatory process based work where individuals are invited toexperience a close relationship of their choice with me. It has evolved to the form of a workshop anda modified mini workshop during Konstfack Exhibition 2011. Through the process of negotiation,‘script’ writing, role-playing and reflexive discussion, we investigate our perception of closerelationships, underlying needs, questioning our idea of intimacy and authenticity of the self.

My initial personal interest in the project was due my personal question of what do I want in arelationship. What influenced that thought? What is truly necessary in a relationship? As I’m inSweden now, I would like to know how the Swedes think and hope to learn from them, as I enjoylearning from people and experiment together. As I believe that everyone has personal experience,insights, and knowledge concerning close relationships and the self that they can share with me. Ifeel that I can learn from anyone, and I value their opinions.

As I believe everyone has something valuable to give and share therefore individual participation isheld dearly in the project. Participation is needed not only in our society, but in art. I believe thatpeople should have the access to art and culture as much as to health care and education, andparticipatory artwork is a way to get people involved and interested in art.