Display (No. 1)

Sensing is how we navigate the world through the vehicles of our bodies and how we ascribe meaning to space and objects. In recent years, science has shown that sensing moves beyond sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell. Not only are humans capable of experiencing other senses such as equilibrioception, thermoception, and chronoception, our senses often blend as we encounter our surrounding world. Displaced/Display investigates ways in which the complexities of sensing assist in building an understanding and therefore, ascribe meaning to objects.
As a curator and archivist of action art, I have accumulated countless objects and materials that have been used in pieces over the past thirty years. Displaced/Display takes the form of an evolving installation that (re)contextualizes six relics from my collection. Over the duration of the exhibition, these relics continuously move throughout the gallery. Do the objects hold sensorial traces from their original actions that can transcend this fragmentation and displacement? Do they gain/lose their power depending on the space they occupy (or don’t occupy) in a room?

The rules for relocation are as follows:
The Relocator may choose to move one-six of the relics at one time.
Option 1: The relic is separated from its plinth. Both relic and plinth are separately relocated in the space.
Option 2: The relic is separated from its plinth. The relic is relocated in the space while the plinth stays in its current position
Option 3: The relic and the plinth are relocated in the space together.

Titles, artist names, and years have been provided, but descriptions of how they were once used have been intentionally omitted. Some of these relics have been gifted to me either within the structure of a performance or afterwards as an expression of gratitude. Others have been left behind by artists, forgotten. Some were stealthily pocketed during the process of cleanup, while others inherited because the artist had nowhere to house them. Some have passed through many hands, recycled into multiple pieces. One is a lie, the original lost during a move and replaced because my desire to remember was far too great, or perhaps because I felt an obligation to protect the action to which it is attached from disappearing over time. What all of these relics share is that they are extensions of the bodies that once enacted them and expansions of time. By investigating these survivors, Displaced/Display aims to create an experiential bridge between a past, present, and future unified in corporeal action and the complexities of sensation.

Swinging Mind/ Unfolded Senses
July 10-24, 2015
LeRoy Neiman Center
Student Union Gallery
Chicago, IL