The initial site, the Balboa Bay Yacht Club, transposed one of the poorest motel rooms in Orange County into one of the most exclusive hotels as an object of wonder during Project Hope’s annual gala benefit. Attendees of the gala encountered the space within the specific context of a benefit and thus had to synthesize visual, spatial and temporal disjunctures. In this context, the subject of the investigation was the nature of the charitable act and how it functions to assuage guilt and assert social status while simultaneously creating intimacies across class between patron and benefactor.
A similar process occurred as the piece travelled to different sites throughout Orange County. At the same time, the terms and the subject of the staged encounter shifted. For instance, during the installation at Saddleback Church, a mega-church with a congregation of over 20,000 run by the pastor Rick Warren, the project revealed how fundamentalist Christianity resolves its principles of ministering to the poor with its dominant political discourse of neo-liberalism. When installed at on the grounds of the University of California-Irvine School of Social Science, the work revealed how works of advocacy, reliant on emotion, is problematic for social theorist trained to operate within rational, intellectual structures.
214 Sq. Ft adopts both of these strategies (“found object” scenography and the historical/social meaning of places) but adds a crucial element of time to acquire what Yvonne Rainer would call a “material for performance”. The initial site, the Balboa Bay Yacht Club, not only transposed one of the poorest motel rooms in Orange County into one of the most exclusive hotels, but also occurred during the specific time of a gala benefit. Attendees of the gala encountered the materialized performance within the specific context of a benefit and thus had to synthesize visual, spatial and temporal disjunctures. In this context, the subject of the work became the nature of the charitable act and how it functions to assuage guilt and assert social status while simultaneously creating intimacies across class between patron and benefactor.
A similar process occurred as the piece travelled to different sites throughout Orange County. At the same time, the terms and the subject of the staged encounter shifted. For instance, during the installation at Saddleback Church, a mega-church with a congregation of over 20,000 run by the pastor Rick Warren, the subject became how fundamentalist Christianity resolves its principles of ministering to the poor with its dominant political discourse of libertarianism. When installed at on the grounds of the University of California-Irvine School of Social Science, the work revealed how works of advocacy, reliant on emotion, is problematic for social theorist trained to operate within rational, intellectual structures.
