Privilege & Space

The work in this grouping looks at specific spaces (or genres of space) and the privilege {or lack thereof) that is associated with it. "Childhood Truths" looks at the kingdom of toddlers [the blanket on the floor] and explores the dismissal of the voices and story generated in that space. "Borders" zooms out in scope and looks at University Hill in Syracuse,NY and physical and psychological borders that exist between the University and the privileged educated community and the industrial community it sits within. Comfortable Spaces uses, again, Syracuse and the University, as a specific site of exploration of heteronormativity. All three pieces address the struggle of voices in "un"privileged spaces.

Borders

"Borders" is a fabric hallway that existed for a week in the Quad of Syracuse University. The hallway brought attention to ways of seeing, ways of framing, and ways of blinding within our space. The walls blocked our normal physical perspective and viewpoints and drew attention to other ways of physically seeing the world. In five large "windows" were removable patches that provided a semiotic system provoking reflection on our understanding of borders, fields of vision, and mediation on our campus, in our lives and in our society.

Childhood Truths

"Childhood Truths" is a reactive environment that challenges adults to relocate themselves to the "baby blanket" (proportional to an adult) on the floor. The blanket consists of four baby toys that flip, open, close and move. That movement triggers a sensor in the Teleo system (microcontroller) that plays a story from my own childhood, revealing how I perceived the world was when I was a child. Each of the 1-2min stories shares a truth of my childhood. For example, the pink, hidden mirror unveils my belief, as a child, that evildoers live within the looking glass during the dark of night.

Adults must, at the very least, sit on the blanket and move the toys for the environment to react and narrate a story. Forcing an adult into this "floor" experience on the floor brings him/her to a more open thought process. Art is no longer understood by looking at a wall, but, rather, on the floor in a play mat or story circle manner, similar to the experiences of a preschooler, but where the environment mediates the experiences of a child.