Archive of Unrealized Projects 18 May 2011 Dear AUP: I hope you will consider including ‘Repo Jet’ in your Archive of Unrealized Projects. Although I currently lack (and am seeking) the resources to complete it, the project is within the realms of realization. Nevertheless, it resonates with the spirit of your archive, as its intentions are to record and archive the visions and dreams of Americans from impoverished and disconnected regions of the United States. It is earnest, ironic, hopeful and apathetic all at once. The project taps into potentiality and desire—driving forces of change.
bio I work at the intersection of performance, video, sculpture and participatory actions to initiate dialogue about politics and culture. I engage in a rigorous, research-based approach to transform complex information into emotional encounters that orchestrate social tensions. Rather than visualizing the unseen, I employ spatial aesthetics to make imperceptible forces a consciously embodied experience. I stage conflict between desire and discomfort through intimate, choreographed encounters between the public and sculptural media—provoking multivalent readings and visceral responses. My video and installation works ‘Transfers’ make anxiety and bodily boundaries visceral and spatial; addressing fundamental biopolitics through acts of pleasure and contagion. Speaking to the earnest dreams and empty excess of American politics is at the heart of ‘Marshmallow Crash’ and ‘Marshmallow Suicide’— video performances of violent and indulgent encounters set against a bucolic landscape. Symbolically charged materials—milk, marshmallows, viruses, bodily organs—are put into tension with humor and disgust in my work. A conceptual methodology and threads of curiosities integrate my practice. Food, fluids, animals, biopolitics, social relations, pathetic gestures, civic agency—all are recurring ideas and materials in my practice. Through them I am searching how we become unsettled, and if states of anxiety can be creative.
repo jet (short description) ‘Repo Jet’ hails from dispossessed economies, American excess and displacement. It is a small, personal airplane repurposed as an off-grid, mobile apartment and site to collect visions for the future. Designed for flight yet always grounded, it will be pulled by a small fleet of bicycles, traveling across the United States to record people’s dreams and provide spectacle where ghost towns and tent cities stand amidst legendary wilderness and speculation. As functional sculpture, it will serve as a model for propositional architectures and emerging technologies. ‘Repo Jet’ reuses symbolic objects, structures and metaphors to form absurd amalgams set against the American landscape and social tensions. The personal jet is transformed into a migrant space, laboriously slow-moving rather than a luxury escape vehicle. ‘Repo Jet’ is not another temporary utopia or simplistic micro-solution to structural failure. Instead, through spectacular sculpture, performance and unstructured listening, it carves out a space for wild imagination.
repo jet (long description) ‘Repo Jet’ hails from dispossessed economies, American excess and displacement. Since the market crash, we have seen foreclosures ghost whole towns and neighborhoods; banks order Mafioso-style chase scenes to repossess luxury jets; and mushrooming poverty changing the American landscape. In moments of economic and environmental crisis, how can we re-articulate the spirit of Manifest Destiny? Can we envision the future without speculating into utopias? ‘Repo Jet’ is a proposition—seriously absurd in accordance with the times. I will purchase an inoperative personal jet and alter its function—private, fuel-based flight—into a small space for shelter and visionary dreaming. Where possible, we will use salvaged materials and innovative technologies to outfit the jet as a mobile apartment equipped with solar and kinetic electricity generators. We will install a system to pull the jet by a small fleet of human-powered bicycles.
‘Repo Jet’ will be a moving spectacle as it journeys across the States, stopping to host workshops, barbecues, dream- recording and storytelling about personal relationships to capitalism, romantic adventuring and American futures. The interior will be upholstered white, squishy and marshmallow-like. People will be invited inside to share and record their visionary dreams for the future. I will create photocollages inspired by their stories, and compile them into a book with dreams and photographs from the journey. Trajectory: - Research & Development in conversation with Building Center No. 3 Architecture Firm - Visualizations & model-making - Collaborative design production with University team - Launch - 1-2 month cross-country museum tour - Stops in small towns along the way - Visionary dreams recorded, barbecues - Finale on West Coast - Material compiled into a book
‘Repo Jet’ will form temporary publics and connections through advance contact with museums, public libraries, gas stations, restaurants, and schools—as well as roadside improvisation. It will be a site for propositional, collaborative design. As such, it will instigate creative discussion wherever it journeys. Traveling from one cultural institution to another, it will stop in towns rarely frequented by contemporary art. ‘Repo Jet’ is a mobile vision for truckers and rural geographies as much as it is for self-selecting cultural audiences. ‘Repo Jet’ reuses symbolic objects, structures and metaphors to form absurd amalgams set against the American landscape and social tensions. The personal jet is transformed into a migrant space, laboriously slow-moving rather than a luxury escape vehicle. ‘Repo Jet’ is not another temporary utopia or simplistic micro-solution to structural failure. Instead, through spectacular sculpture, performance and unstructured listening, it carves out a space for wild imagination. Above all, I wish to creatively acknowledge the wreckage of neoliberalism in America over the past 40 years. The gap between the rich and the poor has reached an extreme greater than what precipitated the Great Depression. I wish to connect metropolises to interstitial landscapes through a journey, allowing both disillusionment and grandeur to share space at the same time. I want to give room to reckless dreaming as a social power. Whether viable or utterly impractical, unleashing the force of dreams into the social sphere is the artistic goal of ‘Repo Jet.’
Sincerely, Caitlin Berrigan
Archive of Unrealized Projects 18 May 2011 Dear AUP: I hope you will consider including ‘Repo Jet’ in your Archive of Unrealized Projects. Although I currently lack (and am seeking) the resources to complete it, the project is within the realms of realization. Nevertheless, it resonates with the spirit of your archive, as its intentions are to record and archive the visions and dreams of Americans from impoverished and disconnected regions of the United States. It is earnest, ironic, hopeful and apathetic all at once. The project taps into potentiality and desire—driving forces of change.
bio I work at the intersection of performance, video, sculpture and participatory actions to initiate dialogue about politics and culture. I engage in a rigorous, research-based approach to transform complex information into emotional encounters that orchestrate social tensions. Rather than visualizing the unseen, I employ spatial aesthetics to make imperceptible forces a consciously embodied experience. I stage conflict between desire and discomfort through intimate, choreographed encounters between the public and sculptural media—provoking multivalent readings and visceral responses. My video and installation works ‘Transfers’ make anxiety and bodily boundaries visceral and spatial; addressing fundamental biopolitics through acts of pleasure and contagion. Speaking to the earnest dreams and empty excess of American politics is at the heart of ‘Marshmallow Crash’ and ‘Marshmallow Suicide’— video performances of violent and indulgent encounters set against a bucolic landscape. Symbolically charged materials—milk, marshmallows, viruses, bodily organs—are put into tension with humor and disgust in my work. A conceptual methodology and threads of curiosities integrate my practice. Food, fluids, animals, biopolitics, social relations, pathetic gestures, civic agency—all are recurring ideas and materials in my practice. Through them I am searching how we become unsettled, and if states of anxiety can be creative.
repo jet (short description) ‘Repo Jet’ hails from dispossessed economies, American excess and displacement. It is a small, personal airplane repurposed as an off-grid, mobile apartment and site to collect visions for the future. Designed for flight yet always grounded, it will be pulled by a small fleet of bicycles, traveling across the United States to record people’s dreams and provide spectacle where ghost towns and tent cities stand amidst legendary wilderness and speculation. As functional sculpture, it will serve as a model for propositional architectures and emerging technologies. ‘Repo Jet’ reuses symbolic objects, structures and metaphors to form absurd amalgams set against the American landscape and social tensions. The personal jet is transformed into a migrant space, laboriously slow-moving rather than a luxury escape vehicle. ‘Repo Jet’ is not another temporary utopia or simplistic micro-solution to structural failure. Instead, through spectacular sculpture, performance and unstructured listening, it carves out a space for wild imagination.
repo jet (long description) ‘Repo Jet’ hails from dispossessed economies, American excess and displacement. Since the market crash, we have seen foreclosures ghost whole towns and neighborhoods; banks order Mafioso-style chase scenes to repossess luxury jets; and mushrooming poverty changing the American landscape. In moments of economic and environmental crisis, how can we re-articulate the spirit of Manifest Destiny? Can we envision the future without speculating into utopias? ‘Repo Jet’ is a proposition—seriously absurd in accordance with the times. I will purchase an inoperative personal jet and alter its function—private, fuel-based flight—into a small space for shelter and visionary dreaming. Where possible, we will use salvaged materials and innovative technologies to outfit the jet as a mobile apartment equipped with solar and kinetic electricity generators. We will install a system to pull the jet by a small fleet of human-powered bicycles.
‘Repo Jet’ will be a moving spectacle as it journeys across the States, stopping to host workshops, barbecues, dream- recording and storytelling about personal relationships to capitalism, romantic adventuring and American futures. The interior will be upholstered white, squishy and marshmallow-like. People will be invited inside to share and record their visionary dreams for the future. I will create photocollages inspired by their stories, and compile them into a book with dreams and photographs from the journey. Trajectory: - Research & Development in conversation with Building Center No. 3 Architecture Firm - Visualizations & model-making - Collaborative design production with University team - Launch - 1-2 month cross-country museum tour - Stops in small towns along the way - Visionary dreams recorded, barbecues - Finale on West Coast - Material compiled into a book
‘Repo Jet’ will form temporary publics and connections through advance contact with museums, public libraries, gas stations, restaurants, and schools—as well as roadside improvisation. It will be a site for propositional, collaborative design. As such, it will instigate creative discussion wherever it journeys. Traveling from one cultural institution to another, it will stop in towns rarely frequented by contemporary art. ‘Repo Jet’ is a mobile vision for truckers and rural geographies as much as it is for self-selecting cultural audiences. ‘Repo Jet’ reuses symbolic objects, structures and metaphors to form absurd amalgams set against the American landscape and social tensions. The personal jet is transformed into a migrant space, laboriously slow-moving rather than a luxury escape vehicle. ‘Repo Jet’ is not another temporary utopia or simplistic micro-solution to structural failure. Instead, through spectacular sculpture, performance and unstructured listening, it carves out a space for wild imagination. Above all, I wish to creatively acknowledge the wreckage of neoliberalism in America over the past 40 years. The gap between the rich and the poor has reached an extreme greater than what precipitated the Great Depression. I wish to connect metropolises to interstitial landscapes through a journey, allowing both disillusionment and grandeur to share space at the same time. I want to give room to reckless dreaming as a social power. Whether viable or utterly impractical, unleashing the force of dreams into the social sphere is the artistic goal of ‘Repo Jet.’
Sincerely, Caitlin Berrigan