(b&w video, 9:11 mins. 2022. sounds made with objects from Elsewhere Museum / Greensboro, NC.)
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes — Marcel Proust
The silences rang out a mystery. Between the walls was an overwhelming entropy where persistent vibrations had me searching on the edge of panic for a month. I put on blinders in order to see. I turned off the lights. I removed all the color. I began searching through the spaces quieted by night, stripping away the inessential in order to reveal the nature of the world right in front of me. The light of day was too harsh to parse out such meanings so I kept working hours with the spiders, invariably found tucked into corners, faithfully making their webs. The resulting series of moments unfold like the slides of a carousel projector. Matter of factly, they display encounters with delicate organisms both living and beyond living. Inanimate objects set into motion by some part of me attempting to tell its own story.
What began as an engagement with outside forces led to an encounter with interiors. Not the interiors of the museum but my own perception of them and what their energetic field brought to light within me. I wandered the halls of an otherworldly landscape, like that of a dream or nightmare, where one meets things that don’t just exist out there. Time collapsed. Things called out in the dark. Their story was also my story. The framed objects manifest an inner feeling which I can’t quite name. Realizations of the self discovered with a flashlight taped to a ballcap.
This work was created during a 4-week fellowship at the Elsewhere museum in the Summer of 2022, using only materials, objects and sounds from the museum collection. The multiple floors, crowded rooms and hallways of Elsewhere once existed as a boarding house and furniture store then evolved into a peculiar type of thrift shop where the owner Sylvia Gray would vary prices on a whim depending on her assessment of the prospective buyer’s connection to the desired item. It is a labyrinthine building like something from a fairy tale. An ever-changing museum with an abundance of toys, fabric, ribbon, mirrors, collectibles, knickknacks, books and art. An odd collection of vibrant materials that brim with history and character.
video 9:11 minutes.