Raimundas Malasauskas talks to Lucy E. Smith about the project.
Rai: First I would like to thank you for the idea of the ‘pass it on’ project.
Lucy: I didn’t call it this.
Rai: Yes, but you mentioned that it would be interesting to deliver a number of mini-DV tapes to different people asking them to record something and to pass it on to someone else with the same request. I thought it was a great idea.
Lucy: Yes, but it’s not mine and it’s not an idea. I heard someone talking about that. Those people were discussing surrealists and the whole exquisite corpse concept, claiming that a time of increasing surveillance the exquisite corpse should be open too.
Rai: That’s what I’ve heard you talking about and decided to turn it into a project. By the way, would this openness make the corpse more dead?
Lucy: I don’t know, but the project, in terms of transmitting information, is always there anyway, so you’ve just picked up one element from someone’s conversation and passed to someone else.
Rai: Exactly, that’s what I wanted to say — I feel as if I’ve received “the letter of happiness” and forwarded it to my best friends — a thing I never would do otherwise. But I am really happy to do it in this case — because I don’t know where this idea is coming from. So in the whole situation I am just another transmission point.
Lucy: Who are those people, by the way?
Rai: Well, the first five tapes will go to Derrick Adams in New York City, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla in Puerto Rico, Arturas Raila in Vilnius, Gabriel Lester in Brussels, Carey Young in London. There will be more later.

After the tapes come back to the programmer, they are rendered to DVD format, which allows them to be accessible both in linear and random form. A screening room, a TV monitor, and DVD player installed provide the ideal situation for watching the tapes. All participants of the project are asked to send their feedback and ideas for contribution to the programmer of the project, so that the information is regularly uploaded on the website www.socalledrecords.com/on.html