This project attends to bodies displaced from home (comfort), on public land, and openly on view. It is a public durational performance on a roundabout in rural America, where audience members are primarily drivers in vehicles. They watched as I dragged, carried, and placed the empty chairs around a large roundabout. Some visitors came and sat on chairs and watched the cars drive by. As can be expected, some drivers yelled/whistled with support and frustration, some stopped and stole the chairs and yellow tow straps, and others called the police. The negotiation of space and acceptability was put on display.
The title comes from Gertrude Stein’s opening CHAPTERS from A Novel of Thank You, an existential labor of language published posthumously, written as follows:
How many more than two are there. If they heard it at once and at once was as afterward whom would they have to mention. And leaves. This makes them wish.
A LONGER CHAPTER
This makes them wish and afterwards this makes them leave and afterwards this makes them leave and wish and this makes them leave and leaves and wish and afterward, this makes them wish and leave and leaves and afterward.
Featured at:
4Ground Midwest Land Art Biennial
Schaefer, Minnesota
The residency, installation, and performance was supported primarily by a Franconia Residency Fellowship, and additional funding was provided by a Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, along with the making of the public installation framing of a space that waits. Thanks Alex Bustamente for the help. You’re the bomb – literally and figuratively.
Photo Credit : Image credits ricky chiang & Kaitlin West
