APROPER ERASURE — disembodied labor 2012-2013
stop motion documentation of the making and erasing of a large wall mural
dimensions: projection 12:50, video 5:00, 11.5 x 44 feet
mixed media on gallery wall, dual channel video installation
Montserrat Galleries, Beverly MA

At the opening of the exhibit, spray bottles filled with water were placed in front of a large-scale wall drawing. The title of the event and the adjacent video projection showing acts of erasing served as an invitation for the audience to physically wash away the marks and leave nothing but the trace of it. This process of making “something from nothing” and back to nothing corresponds to the absurdity of labor in Virno’s book A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. We’re all in this act of virtuosic performance called labor, but when the product is reduced to nearly nothing the performance of labor becomes futile.

Disembodiment:
What started out as an interest in documenting the reversal of the expected life of an image (a permanent product) became an analysis of disembodiment. The act of physical erasing suggest a transformative image reduction into dust particles. Then the documentation of physical labor projected back onto the gallery walls switched its physical form to virtual, which disembodied the act of erasing itself into a virtual representation including the people doing the work. This interrogates the concept of materiality, not only the materiality of the image but the viewers, who are also inseparable part of the work.

intensity of the tangible. physical labor.

erase until it’s gone. document. project back.