Arts Flatland
posted by May 17 at 10:57 AM
onFor the last three weeks, six artists, including Seattle’s Alex Schweder, have been living in a four-story, two-foot deep “vinyl tenement,” as Gothamist called it—a sort of human ant farm based on a 19th-century science fiction novel.
The rooms are barely wider than the artists’s shoulders, the floors connected by slim ladders. They can not pass each other in the hall, but must go around each other, above or below.
The project is called Flatland—“Six people, 20 days, an expedition into 2 dimensions”—and is happening at the Sculpture Center in Queens.
Flatland ends this Sunday, May 20, but by reading the blog you find that at least two of the artists have thrown in the towel and liberated themselves already—and Schweder is planning to leave today. (The two who did leave found themselves with cramps in their feet just from walking in the big, regular world.)
This from Schweder’s last entry on the blog, dated Saturday, May 12:
This space is tight, it is a restraint of one direction. Limits also exist in the amount of space I have, 16 square feet. If I were to take off my skin and stretch it over my floor, I would have some skin left over.There are other limits that inform how we relate to space based on our instructions for occupation: For twenty days, you can leave anytime you want, but cannot re-enter if you do. This points to another facet of occupation, duration.
… The most difficult thing about this proposition is not the tight space, but the duration that you need to stay in it. I could ask someone to get me a scarf at the back of the closet and it would not be a problem. If I asked you to stay in that closet for a week it would likely be met with hesitation.
… This project is a three week house. To follow Wurm’s example, what would a one minute house look like? What would a five year house look like?
Schweder promises in an email that he’ll talk more about living two feet wide when he gets reacclimated and back to Seattle next week.
Comments
Seattle's flatchestedmama (.com) was an old housemate of mine. i think she does some of the neatest lo-fi 'restraining' 'limiting' type of performance art around the city. of course, you can always read the Hunger Artist by Kafka.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm
Looks roomier than my overpriced studio in Eastlake. Damn you, Eastlake.
Hmm, Flatland sounds a lot like the world most of us live in. Seems to me that taking it so literally kinda misses a more important point.
Besides, I think that those artist's house is more vertical than flat, while we are horizontal. They move up and down, forward and backward while we usually move NESW. True, we have stairs to different levels, but they are still flat.
hmmm, well...it's not 2D! seems kinda like astronaut training.
This is Dumb.
The original "Flatland", as I recall, was a story designed to help visualize multiple-dimensional space. It was also a bit of a social commentary.
This "Flatland", in contrast, is really just a stunt, a sort of lame reality tv show without the sex. I suppose we could each be enriched/amused/thought-provoked somehow by hearing people talk about how cramped and uncomfortable it was, but really. I don't believe we needed Artists to inform us of this.
Of course, I'm no artists. I may be missing something "larger" here (ouch!). But I'll be damned if I can see it.
this makes me think of getting drinks and snax at bleu on B'way.
OH my gawd, does that mean there are apartments available? How much is the rent? Are utilities included?
Oh... Queens. Never mind.
@3 Your point would be valid if your ceilings were two feet high.
I'm not a doctor, but I would be worried about the possibility of blood clot formations in the artists' extremities. I'm not an attorney, but I suspect they had to sign liability waivers. Get out now, Alex! No art is worth this.
Paulus, OK, I guess you have got a point there. Come to think of it, what you suggest - flat with two foot ceilings - now that would be an art project that might garner my respect.
I still stand by my point that they are taking the whole 2D think to literally, which I think mutant_gn0me was saying too, perhaps better than me.
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