Beds and Chromosomes: About this Project

by on July 14, 2014

When I returned to New York City in 1997, after a year in Berlin, I continued to explore the themes in my interdisciplinary installation at Tacheles Kunsthaus, Berlin, called “I keep forgetting …” : that is, domestic interiors gone haywire, in which secrets are projected into the surrounding objects and space, environments where interior/psychological and exterior spaces meld. I was drawn particularly to intimate domestic spaces—particular bedrooms and beds—and the spaces between things, such as the space under a bed, baseboards and cornices. Eventually I retrieved about a dozen mattresses from the basement of the Marriott Hotel in NYC and began peeling away the various layers of the box springs, which exposed surfaces remarkably suggestive of cellular layers. I was fascinated by the parallels between mattresses and cells: both are modular units that are simultaneously personal and universal, and the loci of life’s most primal experiences—generic, rectangular forms upon which we leave our most personal imprints and marks. My aim was to eventually combine these in large-scale installations combining sound, video and text, which I had the opportunity to do at the Beall Center of Art and Technology, in Irvine, California.


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