Proposal for Elsewhere Residency – May 2013
SantuWHEREium
“A sanctuary […] is a sacred place, such as a shrine, [and has] come to be used for any place of safety. […] Sanctuary is a word derived from the Latin sanctuarium, [a container for] holy things or perhaps holy people… [This includes] places of holiness, or indeed of safety. A religious sanctuary can be a sacred place (such as a church, temple, Synagogue, or mosque), or a consecrated area… (Wikipedia) As discussed in my artist talk, my current work is concerned with four main themes: gender/sexuality/identity, politics/feminism, technology/cyberspace, and spirituality. The work I am proposing to create at Elsewhere will hone in on spirituality, identity, and technology. I would like to create a sanctuary in Elsewhere as a way to bring together the religious and otherwise sacred objects from the Elsewhere collection, giving them a defined home together. Much of the experience of Elsewhere is introspective. As a a person moves through the collections, they have unique a experience relating what they see, hear, and touch to their own life – identity, situation, memory, etc. The spiritual element of the experience of Elsewhere does not seem to be highlighted in the most interactive part of the museum, the ground floor. I would like to create an installation that invites people to focus on that spirituality, think about their own relationship to religion and other forms of spiritual expression, and meditate on the physical representations of these things that have been produced by our culture. In addition, I’d like to have a place for people to place objects that they identify as sacred or spiritual, in a sort of ongoing shrine – a home not only for the objects I select, but for people’s intentions, meditations, prayers, etc. I have been actively engaged with the ongoing evolution of own my spirituality since I was about 12 years old and started questioning (eventually disavowing) my family’s Catholic faith. My spirituality incorporates elements of paganism, various forms of magic, goddess devotion, and other New Age philosophies. I see this project as a way to continue my own growth as a spiritual being, while creating a safe, noninstitutional alternative for others to do the same, or at least begin or continue to engage in that process. This project is also related to past work I have done, specifically my collaboration with LA artist group Signify Sanctify Believe! at Portland’s Xhurch. I would like to get at least one member of SSB involved with this project as part of a performance/event that will happen at the end of my residency: a night of communal meditation and ceremony to officially consecrate and open this new feature of Elsewhere. In addition to working with SSB longdistance for this event, I would like to lead a series of meditations/rituals focusing on the development of sacred and spiritual space in cyberspace, incorporating technology that we engage with on a daily basis. I have one specific concept that will incorporate the audience’s laptops and cellphones, activated through phone/Skype calls transmitting perpetually looping group mantras. The event would also opportunities for audience members to express their own ideas, experiences, and approaches to the spiritual, which is something that I’m interested in doing with Elsewhere’s Story Bank project. The details of the rest of this performance/event haven’t been fully worked out, because they ultimately depend on the form of what I create and the space in which it comes to exist. My first thought is to use one of the walls of the CoLab area of Elsewhere. I would like for this to be a ground floor project, because I feel it is important for this work to be an ongoing, interactive work that can grow and evolve as the audience and other artists continue the discussion about spirituality and the various approaches we have to try to understand higher realms of consciousness, including spiritual being. The CoLab space is already home to the “dreamcatcher” installation on the ceiling, so the conversation that I’m hoping to catalyze has really already started. My work would definitely be an extension of the heavenly theme established by this work. Oftentimes spaces of devotion, meditation, prayer, and worship are clear, airy, and ethereal, so the CoLab seems like an ideal place because it is very open and needs to stay that way by necessity. Because it is a multiuse space, and is an important place for gatherings of community and the staging of events, the incorporation of sanctuary energy into the CoLab environment could certainly be harmonious with its everyday utilization. As I mentioned above, I will be bringing objects from throughout the Elsewhere collection, but I intend to rearrange and incorporate materials that already exist in the space, ideally ending up with something that is more organized and more useful to everyone. I need to collaborate with Chris and others who make frequent use of the CoLab in order to ensure that it will still fit everyone’s needs, and hopefully can be improved to do so even better! I will need help constructing shelving (or something else with levels) for display. I should be fine with the $50 dollar budget. I only anticipate needing to buy lumber if we don’t have what is needed in the Sky Shop, and perhaps also some paints. Having already gone through the library, it seems that religious/sacred objects make up a significant portion of the Elsewhere collection. Right now these are dispersed, and I would like to bring them together. Future visitors will encounter this work primarily as a section of the collection, similar to the toy areas and the Compartment Store. During the performance, they would be able to experience it as a more literal sanctuary, a place for community spiritual development and exploration. After that, I would like to see this new feature of Elsewhere encourage visitors to consider the spirituality of this place, as well invite them to share their own spirituality, as I said before, perhaps working in conjunction with Story Bank. I would like to see this work serve as a base point for other artists interested in exploring similar/related themes to adapt and build into, onto, and out of. In order to sustain the project, I will set up a guide (most likely a sign) with some suggestions for how visitors could activate and participate in the spirituality of Elsewhere. My goal is for people to take away new ideas and questions (perhaps even understanding) about the infinite potential for spiritual expression, and to inspire people to focus more on how the sacred manifests in all aspects of life. By creating a non institutional example of how spirituality can be expressed, I believe this new feature of Elsewhere could be an important and beautiful addition. I will document the project primarily with photographs. The use of the Story Bank would serve as another form of documentation, which would be created through continued engagement and participation in the work. As spirituality and our understandings of (higher) self are always shifting and changing, and are highly subjective, I would like to see this work grow and change to reflect the audience and artist community as it evolves. All things are temporal. The eventual disintegration of this work
could be viewed as the purest form of death – the release of spiritual matter into the world, followed by the gradual decay of the physical container, the sanctuary.