Experiments with a fictional story based on real life incidents.
An artwork made of gold. A golden toilet. A golden toilet in a common restroom at the Guggenheim museum, New York. It is an art piece called America, created by Maurizo Cattelan. True to it’s title, the art piece aspires to make luxury easily accessible for anyone who would want experience it. To make that possible this 18 karat gold toilet was fixed in the common rest room at the museum.
Initial reactions:
Shock, bewildered…any synonym you can come up with to describe a whole variety of emotions ranging from disbelief to amusement. That’s how the session at the Young Writers’ Club began. There was one common question that came up in everyone’s mind- “Why"?” “What purpose does it serve?”
Reveal after reveal
The toilet later moved to the Blenheim palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site, also the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Over there, visitors were permitted 3 mins with the art piece.
Climax
The toilet gets stolen from the palace! Being connected to the internal plumping, there is much havoc after the act. Could that have been a distraction? Perhaps, but there is no way to tell how the toilet got stolen and taken out of the palace.
Whodunnit?
A list of 6 suspects was on display and the teens had to come up with their own theories of the direction that the plot could take. Witty possibilities were encouraged and that opened up a number of ideas for a good ending of the story. Which one is the best? That dear reader is for you to decide…
Here are the multiple options to choose from:
The burglar is never found
It ends up on e-bay later.
Someone replaces a toilet seat in an airline with the golden seat! A way to smuggle various parts?
Could this be Banksy's work? The infamous artist who shred his own painting at an auction as the audience watched in shock.
The burglar returns, fixes a ceramic one which is gold plated and no one knows. Everyone believes that it came back.
The golden toilet appears near a famous statue.
The detective who was investigating has it in his home- he needed a new toilet in his home and he just needed some excitement- A plumber who comes to fix it would be shocked- room for humor.
More such toilets get produced making it more difficult to trace the original one.
It starts appearing in random parts of the city.
It reappears in the museum in New York in the same stall- could be an American burglar!
Appears in a park-
Distraction to steal something bigger- it is in a dark tunnel in the palace.
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Both weekday and weekend batches are available at the Young Readers' Club. While this program is for the 8-12 age group, the Young Writers' Club program for the 13-15 age group offers a weekly platform to read and discuss curated articles from the news, observe writing approaches and practise one's writing skills.
NEW! Musings from the Young Writers' Club is an online magazine showcasing the work we do at the Young Writers' Club.
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