I attempted this task hoping it could be a highlight for some strangers on an otherwise dull office day. I started by scouting for an appropriate place in the building and superglued a coin to the edge of one of the planters that line up the staircase. Superglue worked great, the coin stayed in place. Great. I didn´t bother to document that first coin, since I assumed it was going to stay there forever. But the coin only stayed there for a day. Mmmm, maybe someone really needed some change? The next day, I glued another coin, in a different corner of the planter/fountain. Checked it out in the afternoon, still there. Next morning, there. "I want to take a pic of that one this time", so I went down before heading home that evening: gone! Well, OK, stuff stays superglued for at least 24 hours in this building. Plenty of time for the task.

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I gave some thought to what could be the best thing to get superglued, and my first choice involved a certain responsibility to the superglued entity, so I had to run a beta test with something else first, something inanimate, and a statue of La Catrina who represents Death, seemed as an appropriate, inanimate enough, object to superglue.
The actual glueing involved the use of a bottom-less Mc Donalds lunch bag that I would "forget" and that would be picked up by someone, unveiling the glued figure. The idea turned out to be very stupid and the lunch bag stayed there for almost an hour without eliciting anyone´s interest, so I had to unveil it myself.
Once unveiled, La Catrina turned out to be immediately interesting for a guy that I had seen while eating my lunch at the spot, just before I glued The Catrina to the building. The guy appeared to be a regular-looking office guy, waiting for his ride at the foot of the staircase. But the speed with which he purposedly raced to where a strange object was placed revealed that he was an undercover security guard, who immediately headed up towards La Catrina and proceeded to take it away, looking a bit surprised when found that it was glued, but yanking it off and removing it hastily.
I had hoped that my Catrina would get some chuckles out of the passers-by, that some people would attempt to move it, and would look intrigued. But there was no surprise or laughter or sharing it with someone else from this guy. Just efficient elimination of the evidence.
I got scared behind the glass, which is obvious in the way I messed up the picture that was expected to show the guy standing in in front of the statue, pulling it off. Heart pounding, I took the elevator to my office in the 5th floor, awfully aware that I was wearing a blouse that was entirely too pink and that the guy had actually seen me. I had no idea there were undercover policemen/security guards at my office building. There are already plenty of the ones in uniform. That evening when I left I saw that one of the uniformed guards was now standing in front of the very spot wher La Catrina had been.

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My original plan after this beta test was to superglue a fishbowl with a live fish to the building. Now I am way too spooked to do it. I guess I could change the location to the inside of the elevator, where there are no surveillance cameras, I think, but the whole enterprise has ceased to be fun. I was not aware of the extent of the surveillance in a regular commercial building, and of the extent a prank like this is regarded as something that needs to be dissappeared immediately by people specifically hired for the task. I have to repeat myself that there is nothing to fear, after all, what could they charge me with? What´s the worst that could happen? But I guess what gets me down is what this means about how much the spaces are no longer ours, how much the world belongs to the square-minded people and how hard to find are freedom and humor lately.

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Earlier that day I had hung a 5-meter-long pink ribbon from my office vent, which danced wildly on the wind. It was a pretty sight from the street and I documented it. I guess the building could be a very decent canvass for hanging some message or picture. But afterwards I was too scared to leave that pink ribbon out.

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I had hoped that this task would prove that people could still play, even within a corporate building, but that is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought. It makes me really sad, to find out that we are much more trapped that we realize. I guess that only a good orchestrated collaborative effort has any chance to do something about it.

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The task had been a failure, anyway, since I hadn´t superglued anything to the ground, as the task instructions stated. So I took the empty-fishbowl-that-would- never-hold-the-fish-that-would-lighten-up-the-day-of-office-workers and put several snail shells in it, and went out to superglue it to the ground.
I discovered that the city ground is not an easy place to superglue stuff: too dirty, too grainy, too uneven. I finally found a spot and documented the glued snailshells bowl. I stood by and watched how it went unnnoticed for at least two hours (it was late and people walked fast to the bus stop, kind of far from it). But it was gone the next morning, leaving a hole in the yellow paint of the sidewalk edge where it had been placed.
I hope someone at least enjoyed the snail shells. I would have.