Overview
1998, site-specific installation at The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA.
7-channel video, LCD monitors, audio CD, spotlight, theatrical curtain, table, clothing, steel
For this commissioned installation at the Mattress Factory, I deliberately chose to work in the basement of the building due to the rich potential the space held, as a dark, forgotten, repressed, dungeon-like space. I was also inspired by the presence of an old burlesque theatre within a few blocks of the Mattress Factory that was on the verge of closing.
Seeing, and its counter-part, feeling looked-at, are important connotations of the word "spot" in the installation I created there. Viewers shift between the positions of viewer and viewed in a space which resembles the backstage of a burlesque theatre containing a table with clothing and a video showing the artist wearing these clothes as she emerges through a curtain onto a stage. The viewer then unknowingly echoes this same action as they enter the main space of the installation through the back of a red theatrical curtain and are met with a spotlight shining on them. In the position of the audience sit 6 LCD monitors sketching a shadowy figure (in an arrangement reminiscent of the reclining figure in Marcel Duchamp's Étant Donnés). A verbal translation of the first minute of a pornographic film is narrated repeatedly, in which the pronouns "he," "she," "I," and "you" shift in an unstable relation to one another. The installation explores the fluidity of identity implicit within the act of immersing oneself in a narrative.