FURNITURE IS SOMETHING SOFT BETWEEN YOU AND THE HOUSE (2019)
Installation.
Furniture is Something Soft Between You And The House is a sculptural intervention that examines the interplay between knowing and sensing, performing and viewing, domestic and social space. It was first presented for Shelter Or Playground at the MAK Center.
Furniture Is Something Soft Between You And The House. High density foam, jumbo spandex, nylon straps, plastic buckles. Dimensions variable. (Approx 10x12ft)
A mediating entity, Furniture is Something Soft Between You And The House invites viewers to lower their gaze and share their personal space. Continuous with the design philosophy of the Schindler House, the piece invites viewers to engage with each other in small groups in unprescribed floor-bound activities reminiscent of both the camping trips that inspired Schindler and his wife Pauline and the activities that occurred in the House Of Dust during its CalArts era: hanging out, laying down, talking, making out or just being high on the floor. In this way, the work operates as an apparatus for revealing the visitors’ roles as both viewers and performers.
By challenging the visitors to engage in with each other in a quasi-intimate space, the piece reflects a conception education that is social and embodied. Studying, an activity important to both Schindler’s architecture(each room is a studio) and Alison Knowles’ House Of Dust(a house for students), is though of as a multimodal practice that includes mimetics, listening through the body and the lexicon of body language. Further interrogating the question of embodiment and knowledge, Slow Reading Club led a group performance during which multiple bodies performed a curated selection of texts.
About Shelter or Playground: This exhibition springs from The House of Dust, a seminal yet under-recognized late 1960s work by Fluxus artist Alison Knowles. Originally called The Play House, this intermedia piece serves as an entry point into contemporary investigation of the relationships between architecture, technology, and performance. In a text titled Shelter or Playground, Rudolf Schindler described his house as a “Playground” that “grows with its inhabitants” and where “life will regain its fluidity”. Today, the house open its doors to contemporary artists who have been invited to produce site-specific works, responding to both architectures by Schindler and Knowles and translating them into multiple performative forms. Curated by Maud Jacquin, Anna Milone and Sébastien Pluot, this group exhibition is the result of a collective research effort initiated by Art By Translation (TALM Angers & École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy) with the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and France Los Angeles Exchange (FLAX), in collaboration with CalArts. |
Furniture Is Something Soft Between You And The House
Shelter Or Playground
MAK Center for Art and Architecture
835 N. Kings Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
02.09.19 - 06.02.19
Credits:
Concept and Fabrication: Jasmin Blasco and David Okum.
Title: Bryana Fritz.