The Bridge Club

The Observation Room at 1708 Gallery, July 17- August 15 2009

The Observation Room incorporates a Victorian notion of identity—that our identities can be contained by our possessions and surroundings, and that our stories can be told by what we leave behind. The installation features four related components: an exhibit invoking the carefully arranged display of a history museum, a built environment containing a series of domestic spatial vignettes, a one-night performance calling to mind the fictitious historical reenactment seen at Colonial Williamsburg or any ‘living history’ museum, and a video depicting the physical use of historic objects and preserving a record of their function in familiar documentary fashion.

An ambiguous relationship exists between the historical objects found in the various exhibit components. In the ‘museum’ display, these objects have been catalogued and preserved as historic artifacts, while in the video, the objects nostalgically demonstrate a bygone way of life. In the performance and domestic environment, these objects’ continued presence (or absence) marks their ongoing functional necessity.

Using simultaneously the conventions of contemporary art— clean white walls, oversized video projection, and temporal, live performance— as well as the conventions of historic preservation, The Observation Room challenges and conflates our ideas about the collection and preservation of art and objects, and points to the viewer’s complicity in designations of value and construction of narrative.

from...
http://www.thebridgeclub.net/

http://thebridgeclub.net/works/the-observation-room/