Trading Card - "G"

2005. Brochure.

“Comfortable Space” was a collaborative research project with three undergraduate students, one graduate student (me) and the LGBT Resource Center at Syracuse University. The project was facilitated through the Boundaries in Syracuse course taught by Lori Brown & Alison Mountz. The main focus of the research was on how the university LGBT community defines comfortable space.

There were two large outcomes of this project. First there was a close examination of hetero-normative spaces on campus, particularly bathrooms. A number of students are not perceived as belonging to the gender dichotomy of male and female, therefore a directory of single stall bathrooms, along with specific details about safety and the current labeling of the bathrooms was compiled. That compilation is available as a webpage off of the SU LGBT Resource Center website and as a printed brochure.The project also included installation at Company Gallery that looks at comfortable and uncomfortable space through physical space, video, audio and maps.

A set of 6 “trading cards” that point out hetero-normative space and the many locations and spatial situations heterosexuals take for granted. These cards are used as a way to initiate the conversation outside of the installation, or as a continuation of the installation.

Stalled Decisions article about the project in the Daily Orange

Students continue to lobby for gender-neutral spaces.  A 2009 report in the Daily Orange indicates that the University plans to build at least one gender-neutral single-stall bathroom in each building.

2005. Installation @ Syracuse University

2005. Installation @ Syracuse University

2005. Installation @ Syracuse University Detail

“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.

2005. Installation @ Lanigan Hall, SUNY Oswego

“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.