sethdamm

This was my contribution to a show called “My Personal Flag” that took place in Marfa, Texas in my friend Lorna Leedy’s store Fancyponyland.  I spent over a week in Marfa and during that time I was working on an idea for the flag show.  I wanted to build a flag contraption out of all found ingredients from Marfa.  I borrowed a bike, found a metal pipe, a log, and an old ceiling fan.  The only thing I bought was some rope from the tackle shop.  Don’t ask me where this was all headed, it was fun to be open to ingredients that caught my eye and then try to fit them into the idea of a contraption. 

In the end I got the rope to go in a loop around the wheels, but actually coming up with a way to dip the flag in a mud puddle, well that went far beyond my powers of creation at the time.  I was drawing a big blank, so I decided to make the entire thing about being broken.  Ideas don’t always come together.  The creative process comes up on dead ends.  I showed all my broken parts under the tree.  People came and spun the wheel over and over again.  The ceiling fan hanging by electrical wire over my built mud puddle was a rudimentary suggestion of an air-conditioning unit, and a reference to the ongoing drought in Texas.  Broken rain clouds.  Broken Flags.  Broken contraption.

all the light all the flesh

all the pouting all the smiles

On a practical level I picture both of these pieces being projected larger as a backdrop for an event of some kind, not necessarily viewed the way you would a video with a storyline (though be my guest). They turned out very atmospheric, especially with the audio, and have the quality of kinetic abstract paintings.

The experiment for me was taking a magazine or newspaper and having a set of parameters that defined my flipping through the pages.  I would take a photo each time I crossed an image of light or an image of flesh in the first case and in the second all images of pouting and of smiles.  The pouting and smiles video takes up more time because there turns out to be quite a bit of pouting in a Nylon magazine and a fair amount of smiling.  When leafing through Seattle’s Stranger I am often taken by the juxtaposition of political articles about the mayor, for example, with ads for stripclubs or sex toys.  I wanted to diffuse the in-your-face quality of sex with the more ephemeral qualities of light.  But after putting the stills in video format I noticed the similarities of both, each having the potential to burn or smolder.

These are a few photos to round out the previous shots of the house under construction.  The way it works is I have a zippered entrance in the back where I can get in and out of the house.  Once inside I am hidden behind a painting that divides the inside of the structure and creates one wall of a small antechamber, or confessional as some people relate to it.   From behind that painting/wall I have a system of mechanisms for making the house expand up and down and for raising the front panel so that people can enter through a red velvet curtain.  For the surrender portion of the performance there is a note inside that asks people to write down a moment of surrender and slide it through the heart of the coyote.  From behind the painting I take the card slid to me through a slit in the painting and I pass back a small blank envelope containing an embossed surrender flag. This is the basic formula for the piece.  Of course nothing is ever that simple, especially when you bring something out of the studio and into the street, and invite people to interact.  All sorts of craziness ensues.

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Surrender House in New Orleans

Here are some additional images from the opening of Soft Architecture at KKprojects in New Orleans.

Images taken during the road trip from Seattle to New Orleans for the Soft Architecture show at KK Projects.

Kristin, my collaborator, and I would pull over whenever the setting seemed right. She would don the coyote head and slip into the baggy jeans and t-shirt and become the aloof wild teenage coyote.  Every once in a while we would spot a lonely teenager walking along the side of the road and feel a certain kinship.  It was those attributes of adaptability, wildness, and awkwardness of both teenagers and coyotes that made them a perfect match. That character turned out to be the necessary conduit for so many of the ideas I had for the Surrender House.  The coyote became the animating force for the entire piece.  And to eventually see that teenage coyote in the streets of New Orleans was an exciting culmination of months of hard work sewing and constructing the Surrender House.

In October, two collaborators (Gina Coffman and Kristin Ougendal) and I, expanded on the idea of the coyote and the Surrender House for a month long 4-part series sponsored by the Seattle Parks department and 4culture. http://occidentalpark.wordpress.com/events/

There are plenty more pictures and thoughts to organize and share.

This is something I’m working on for a January show in New Orleans at KKprojects. It was originally conceived as a surrender house so I’ve stuck with that title. But, as is usually the case, ideas shift once I start building. This construction is especially difficult, because not only does it need to move, but it also goes from being a one story structure to a two story structure, and people need to be able to enter into a portion (I will be inside in a hidden area).

All kinds of unexpected problems have arisen, but that is part of moving from an idea to a physical form, so in some ways nothing is unexpected. The biggest factor in tackling problems has more to do with how much energy and focus I have during the day and if I’ve remembered to have lunch.

The next step will be sewing siding onto all the panels, building a roof, and then starting to finish off the inside. Plus the overarching concept is still evolving. Now there are coyotes involved where there weren’t any before.

I’ve also got to get this from Seattle to New Orleans. Could of just done a drawing, but that would be too easy.