The Suspended Room (1997)

medium: installation
dimensions: variable

The Suspended Room is a broken narrative play that explores life and death, mental instability, and issues of human intimacy. It is presented in an installation environment, and reveals itself to the viewer abstractly, through a number of disparate elements and objects.

These objects -- photographic speaker-lightboxes, a neon sign, an industrial fan, a shovel -- are placed in specific relationships to one another; positioning occurs in a clockwise fashion from the entrance of the space moving in a circle and back out. Six language-based audio scenes make up this installation, envorinmental and ambient in nature, hypersynthetic recordings of outdoor sceneries. Soundtrack lengths for each scene vary (the linear total of all six scores = 52:00) but all scenes are played at once in the gallery space, randomly interacting in a collage of sound and voice.

The installation of The Suspended Room requires an alteration of the white-box normally associated with the gallery space; instead a theatrical transformation of the gallery occurs to simulate a night-time atmosphere for the narrative to take place in. The walls are painted a dark dusk-blue, and all sources of ambient light (windows, doors, etc) are blocked out.

The Suspended Room has been described by critics as a deconstructed noir murder tale.

• Read Essay 01 (by Ihor Holibizky, also leads to an animated view of 'Repetitive Stabbing Device')

• Read Article 02 (by Helga Pakasaar)

 

image: details of 'The Suspended Room' at its Windsor debut, Art Gallery of Windsor, 1998.

 

images: details of 'The Suspended Room' at its Windsor debut, Art Gallery of Windsor, 1998.