The Living Room
The Living Room, 2009. The installation was built to look like an inviting living room space; A coffee table, a loveseat, a fireplace…
The love seat faced three of my videos playing: ‘Ag dul sios an staighre’, ‘Crossing’ and ‘Go Round’, which can be seen under ‘Performances’: ‘The Unattainable’
Electric fire logs glow from the hearth while the record player within the mantel plays soft, ambient music and the sound of fire crackling. On the coffee table (at least at the opening, they went fast) are home made whoopi pies for guests to snack on while they watch the videos.
There is an audio tour available for the guests to listen to as they watch the videos and move through the living room, serving as a special commentary for those who choose to follow it. The audio tours are hidden inside fake books on the mantel place.
Audio Tour Welcome:
Track 1
If you have been a truly dedicated Audio Tour Guest and have listened beyond the Welcome message and Track 1, Track 2 will give you something a little more…a little reward.
Listen to Track 2:
Track 2 leads you to a hidden video, inside the lower right hand side of the mantel place. A video I like to call: ‘ I like you and this is how I show it’
Inside the right hand lower cabinet of the mantel is a teeny tiny video of a penis moving around, sent to me out of the blue via camera phone from a guy I went on one date with. Just one date. I haven’t talked to him since, but used this video as part of my living room installation. It’s certainly interesting how easy visual information can be sent today. However, you’ve got to be aware that what you send from your device of choice…can go anywhere. Track 2 leads you to this hidden video and gives further commentary about the situation, the contemporary dating world itself, and the effects of forever changing forms of technology.
Track 3 will lead you to the mantel place again, instruct you to pick something up from the top of it and examine it…
Listen to Track 3:
Track 5: The Origin of the Loveseat
If you have made it to the final track, you will be given the hiding place of the final video… behind the framed print on the mantel place.
Listen to Track 6
The framed print, ‘Beautiful Birds, Delicious Desserts, Pigeons and Whoopi Pies’ is a photogravure and an eight color silk screen print. Before we had processed snack cakes and cities full of pigeons, we had beautiful birds and delicious desserts.
The video behind the framed print is ‘Waiting’, I stand in front of dozens of beautiful, decorative fireplaces. Fireplaces that were once utilized but now are just for show. Standing in appropriate pose I wait for someone to enter the room.
The Wallpaper behind the mantel place is, ‘Today’s Toile’, is a three color silk- screened toile wallpaper, based on traditional toile design and layout, it is drawn with a contemporary twist. Imagery: Foreclose house, abandoned carousel, trash bag in tree, shopping cart, forgotten railroad tracks, doves turning into pigeons.
