By Pat Perry
I spent many winter evenings coming up with prompts and slowly concocting this thing. Part of what I wanted was to create an excuse for people to find themselves in places they might pass by often but never actually stand in. Ditches. Behind shopping centers. Meadows and fields. Service roads. I have been preoccupied with this idea in my work for years, just not in such a direct participatory way. I keep returning to the boring Midwest and the feeling that, no matter how homogenized or generic your world of commercial strips and residential streets is, there is still some haunted, metaphysical terrain lying just out of sight.
As I kept coming up with prompts, I realized that the project might also be able to create situations where people are compelled to interact with strangers and briefly encounter others in ways that normal routines are not especially conducive to. So it’s a photo project, but it’s just as much about briefly rearranging the conditions under which we all move through our environment. It’s more rare than it sounds. Most people only end up in these kinds of situations because either something has gone wrong, they’re playing Pokémon GO, they’re on mushrooms, or they’re doing an art project. So my appeal is: do the last option. Play Liminal Bingo.
Liminal Bingo is a participatory photo hunt. Anyone can participate with any camera. Analog photos are especially encouraged. The idea is simple: There’s a poster filled with 25 prompts. Go out and take photos in response to the prompts. A bingo = Five squares in a row: across, down, diagonal, or at random. You choose. You can complete as many or as few prompts as you’d like.
Afterward, post a carousel of your photos to IG. Tag @heypatyeah, and use #LIMINALBINGO. Completed bingos or works-in-progress. A selection of posted photos will be featured online and in a possible future book. There is no deadline. Images posted by the end of August 2026 will be considered for a November 2026 exhibition about the project at Hashimoto Contemporary in NYC
Pat Perry (b. Michigan, 1991) is an American artist. His practice includes painting, drawing, photography, and installing large-scale outdoor murals around the world.
Pat lives and works in Detroit, where he is attempting to regrow a forest on the twelve vacant lots that surround his house.
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