Footage from performance at Southern Exposure as part of Michael Swaine's Directions given, Directions taken. September 2015.
Visiting Chinee Inflatables Guangzhou-China.
Sketch translated by the factory workers
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10 x 10 x 10 ft, custom made bouncy house produced in collaboration with Chinee inflatables in Guangzhou China.
"Epitaph to the flame"
(cloud temple)
Soft sculpture (2015- ongoing)
Ceramic Relic. 11in x 11in x 11 in. 2015
Active spectators. October 2016.
"Bouncing with Vito A" (from memory). More drawings here
#Epitaph to the Flame (a cloud temple)
On-going inflatable travelling installation
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Epitaph to the Flame is a participatory sculpture that bridges time and space by expanding and contracting experiences amalgamated by the object’s lives. Containing traces of places like China and the Nevada desert or different people from Faerie radicals to Vito Acconci the sculpture is a relic of its own created engagements.
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In each iteration, this project aims to expand its links and connections by creating new memories articulated into the object’s timeline. Inflation and deflation are an important to the piece as they reveal the ephemeral and intangible component that separates life and death.
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Participants are encouraged to watch, meditate, bounce or ignore. Object is becoming.
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As a component of my ethnographic research in China back in March 2015, I designed and produced an all-white entry-less bouncy house in collaboration with Chinnee Inflatables: a factory that specializes in inflatable products located in industrial Guangzhou. I visited the factory to translate my design which brought together two strands of inquiry; at the moment I was reading Bataille’s Visions of Excess and was coping with the idea of art as an unproductive expenditure, and I also wanted to make a large-scale sculpture that could expand and contract while having a direct relationship to the body. The factory owners were skeptical about my design – four pillars connected by four walls with no opening - and asked about its functionality. I resisted telling them it was for art’s sake and after some resistance they agreed to produce my unproductive white bouncy house. When I got my customized bouncy house back in San Francisco, I discovered that the workers found a way to materialize my design while still make it accessible: they made vertical slits through the inflatable columns.
Richmond Field Station. May 2015.
Groundswell during Beltane. May 2016
Black Rock City, Nevada. September 2016
Corte Madera Centennial Art Show. October 2016.
The key to the kingdom. Digital Collage. 13 in x 7 in. 2015. Courtesy of the artist
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The key to the kingdom. Digital Collage. 13 in x 7 in. 2015. Courtesy of the artist