SCHOFFMAN STOPPED IN EBOLI

FROM JUNE, 1988 TILL NOVEMBER, 1993, DAVID SCHOFFMAN TRAVELED THROUGH EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST LEAVING THINGS BEHIND.

I Left My Nudes in Cala Gonone. Date unknown

During those five years, from Sana'a to San Tropez, Damascus to Deauville, Ramla to Rotterdam my restless colleague David Schoffman  mischievously and systematically deposited trifling little doodles in hotels, hostels, brothels, ashrams, bed and breakfasts, fleabags, cruise ships and camp sights. With the generous assistance of the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs and L'Association d'Idées Légitimement non Essayées, Schoffman spent those years working on a piece of performance art that later became known as "The Itinerant Scribbles."

Schoffman traveled, mostly by foot, for 262 consecutive weeks. In each place he stopped he left behind a small drawing and placed it in a drawer or buried it within the pages of a book or folded it into a menu and in one case even tacked it into a shower stall. In total he drew over six thousand drawings on hotel stationary, restaurant napkins, receipts, business cards, discarded faxes, post-its and parchments. 

On the back of each drawing he wrote the following instructions in six different languages:

"IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO 'POSTAMT KASTEN NO. 31299,  6304 ZUG'"

It has taken over twenty years to collect these tiny treasures. Amazingly, about 950 drawings were sent to the Swiss post office box. Now, after extensive cataloging, annotating and authenticating the Itinerant Scribbles are ready for exhibition.

The show, appropriately, will be a traveling one with its first stop in Pisticci in the southern Italian region of Basilicata where David began his peregrinations 22 years ago.