I That There When We’re Steeped In Dirt, collaborative exhibition, inkjet printer, paper, 2020
Hallways are curious: They are always being passed through as one is on their way to somewhere else. Transitional in their essence, they are built in order to guide us as we try to collapse space with our bodies. They are both always in the way (existing between me and where I want to go) and also always the way (to get to where I’m going.)
While in grad school, there was a particular hallway, at the foot of a stairwell towards the back of CalArts’ main building, that I was very interested in. It had shiny black floors, two bright orange doors, and an entire wall of south-facing windows. And it was wide: nearly a foyer with its buxom shape! I wondered how people were doing as they passed through it. Or maybe I was always wondering how I was doing, as I passed through it. Boots making squeak noises on that too-shiny floor. I decided to turn it into a gallery, for two weeks.
My audience for this work was the person walking through the hallway on their way to class or work, and so I wanted the art in the show to be constantly shifting in subtle ways, for someone walking through to feel like, “wait, wasn’t that painting two feet to the left yesterday?” That sense of glitch, that shock of attentiveness, or presence. That not quite knowing—and the possible tinge of a surreal or embodied experience that could result.
The show began at the very beginning: with an invitation to everyone I knew at CalArts. From there, I met with each artist that responded to my invitation, and had a very personal and meandering studio visit with them about what work they were curious to explore for the show. I sat with them while they talked about their work-in-progress and absorbed their energy. Then, I went back to my studio with my notes, and wrote them a score for how their work should be made for the space. The scores were both choreographies and prayers. I thought I would also be making visual work for the show, but in the end I realized that the show itself was my work, so I had a studio visit with myself, absorbed my own energy, and wrote myself a score.
The building shut down a week before the show was going to be installed, and so our capacity to move through the hallway together was severely impacted. The show was never installed, but every now and then, I get texted a photo from one of the artists whose found their score crumpled up in a pants’ pocket.
So this is what lives on: a set of printed scores, created for a highly time-sensitive speculative exhibition rooted in the collaborative spirit of ten artists, in the winter of 2020.