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Amy Van Doran: I've been running the Modern Love Club for eight years as a matchmaker. I started off giving free love advice on the streets. The museum is this durational performance piece where I'm actively listening to the contemporary state of what's happening with love in New York City. I'm curating people's love lives, so I thought it would be cool to have this fun gallery that doesn't have to make a lot of money. Because matchmaking sustains the business, it can be a true labor of love.
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It's where my people are. I like the sense of community. I like that people just come in here and tell me their life stories. It feels really magically charged. In the East Village, people actually talk to one another. We set up this free date spot, so people will walk in and start hitting on one another. What I love is that it's the opposite of Tinder. People are meeting in real life. This has been a conduit for getting strangers to talk to one another again and use art as a way to open conversation.

Yeah! I just sit there watching them. It makes me so happy! It doesn't have to be a big deal to talk to strangers. You can just sit in a chair and engage with whoever walks by. Every person that I've ever fallen in love with I've met while walking down the street or doing something I love. People like having that magical inception in this place, whether they are hiring me as a matchmaker or getting involved by making art. It's a place where they can come and not have to buy anything, not have to spend any money, but just talk to strangers. That's my life's work.
"If you went to ten of your friends and said, 'I want to meet someone great, [can] you all set me up on a date with your favorite male person?' your dating experience would be so much more uplifting."
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With online dating, people keep looking for the next thing, so they're not focused on who's around, who's connected to who, who can vouch for who. If you went to ten of your friends and said, "I want to meet someone great, [can] you all set me up on a date with your favorite male person?" your dating experience would be so much more uplifting. You would go in thinking that this person is going to be great instead of assuming that you're going to be disappointed.So what do you do if you're new to a city and don't know many people?
First of all, you get to choose your friends. I remember when I moved to New York 12 years ago, I'd just walk around and say, "Hi!" But don't treat it like the stakes are high. Just look at each person and try to see the humanness in them and the humanness in you and connect. It's not about having a laundry list of what you require from other people, but rather that everyone is fucking special and interesting and surprising. It's like treating the world as if it's the bar you usually go to. Whenever someone goes into your bar, you're like, "Hey! I haven't seen you around here before. What's your story?" Just treat the entire city like that.

Our culture is built on selling things, and I think the way that you sell things is to make people feel bad about themselves. It's really hard on us. I don't know how anyone is getting out of bed in the morning. You watch reality TV and all the women have blond hair, their skin is the same color, and their teeth are so white. It gives you this idea that love is for other people. But what I've found through doing this for a while is the people who are the most successful are not the people who are doing anything to make themselves homogeneous. They are clear about who they are and align who they are internally with their visual representation of themselves. If everyone is trying to be someone else, it doesn't feel special. I'd rather be one person's favorite person than everyone's passively fine person.But I don't have any answers or solutions. I think that anyone who claims to have that is just full of shit.Follow Sarah Bellman on Twitter.Girls I Love! will be open to public on Saturday, October 8, 6–9 PM at the Love Museum on 156 First Avenue in New York.
