I'm working today, but I thought I would stroll around the Three Rivers Arts Festival at lunchtime. Here are some of the art installations I saw:

• The first installation was a metaphorical space where teenagers were performing an optimistic piece designed apparently to present a positive image of contemporary youth. Encased in a small booth, they had a pile of lemons, and they used them to make lemonade. This played on linguistic convention by literalizing a metaphor in order to show us how language can construct our reality, and it also struck an ironic note, as the making of lemonade did not seem to make them (the youths) significantly happier, as the traditional saying might suggest. People viewing this installation were encouraged to participate by taking some of the lemonade, in return for what seemed to be a mandatory two-dollar donation.
  
• Another installation in the same area featured a similarly performative/interactive motif, as several slightly older artists performed a piece they called "Polish sausages", creating a post-modern punning verbal interplay requiring viewers to understand the dual meaning of "Polish"--playing on questions of ethnic identity, while simultaneously reflecting notions of giving a "polish-ed" performance. The performance demonstrated a Brecht-ian dissonance, as the "polish-ed" acting out of "Polish-ness" was actually performed by people who seemed ethnically Asian. (The meaning of the "sausage" in the title and the performance eluded me, though it may have been a veiled reference to the axiom that "Those who love sausage and the law should never watch either one being made," thus suggesting the complications and occasional horrors of producing culture and of identity politics.)
  As in the previous installation, performers at this booth also produced actual consumable goods, allowing viewers to participate, again for a mandatory donation.
  
• Farther down toward Point State Park was a particularly avant garde booth. Artists at this booth portrayed representatives of a credit card company, soliciting passers-by to fill out paperwork to sign up for a credit card in order to receive a free gift in return. This installation resonated deeply, as it commented on the proliferation of such transactions in our culture, as if to suggest that not even a festival dedicated to artistic endeavor could be free of such rampant commercial activity. Patrons also participated gleefully here, although in this case no up-front donation seemed to be necessary. I chose simply to watch.
  
• I continued my stroll with a trip into the Fort Pitt Museum. I would strongly recommend this museum to all fans of dioramas and exhibits written before modern trends in historiography, such as treating Indians as if they were actually people.
  

After leaving the park area proper, I returned to the "Polish sausage" installation, and this time I actually chose to participate in the interactive aspect of the exhibit. Feeling that I had done my part to encourage the local arts community, I returned to work, my appetite for artistic expression and my appetite for meat equally sated.