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Tombstone
pair: wood, formica, vinyl adhesive stickers, quilted
cushion and tape player with audio track
Campfire: wood, formica, christmas tree lights, vinyl placemat
 Dirt
Mound and Pee Spot: quilted satin cushion, computer-generated
vinyl adhesive sticker
detail: First Aid survival kit behind tombstone
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A
Little Death
1999
Wood,
formica laminate, christmas tree lights, quilted satin cushions
and beanbag seating, computer-generated vinyl adhesive stickers,
tape players and audio track, light fixture, various hardware
Installed at Haines Gallery,
San Francisco
Stumbling
into the middle of a movie or a play, one struggles to get their
bearings, taking cues from the objects in the sets, the backdrops,
and the tone of the actors, in an attempt to cobble together a
storyline that can establish an immediate working order. That
initially surmised plot has to be flexible as well, for as the
film unfolds, new cues can trigger wildly differing narratives.
What one initially thought was a horror film turns out to be a
cartoon. The props of the adventure/expedition story morph into
interior design elements. The plotline of the Merchant-Ivory period
film takes a futuristic sci-fi turn. Lastly, the actors seem to
be missing, until one realizes one is actually standing in the
set.
A
polyglot of places and times, "a little death" sets
a stage of collapses and plays psychic doppelganger to form a
contemporized gothic noir. Miming at an ending, playing dead,
showing the seams, and feinting blows, the doom is a decoyÑa fin
de mille bastard that a modern day fraulein Frankenstein daydreams
of.
If
we have arrived at a point where the banality of our upholstered
everyday becomes itself horror and terror, perhaps it is time
to re- examine what was traditionally labeled horrific and terrifying:
the figurative monsters and mutations once deemed outlandishly
unfit, the breakdowns and fits of hysteria that contaminate our
minds, the "sicknesses" that force our bodies onto machines.
Armed with a debunked mythology, one could create new plotlines
for the prefab props at hand, sans nostalgia and urgently opposed
to fears of a future. Examining our horror-decoys could shed light
on the possibility that perhaps we could use, metaphorically,
a little death. Not a lot, just a little.
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