Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Uroskie, Andrew V | Patterson, Zabet
Date
2014-12-01
Keywords
Art history
Department
Department of Art History and Criticism.
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76881
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
At the start of the 1970s, Charles Simonds began constructing miniature architectural ruins, what he calls dwellings, on the streets of New York City. They were fragile, temporary, and site specific. Occupying windowsills, wall crevices, and street gutters, the dwellings transformed their spaces from liminal to distinct. Over the course of the decade, Simonds built hundreds of dwellings in the Lower East Side alone, and they consequently developed a strong connection to the neighborhood. This essay addresses the dwellings as sites of makeshift ecologies. Looking at the reflexive relation between Simonds' sculptures and deteriorated living conditions in the Lower East Side, I argue that the dwellings carved out zones for reciprocal flows of communication and exchange between people. Unhinging Simonds from the binary structures that have come to characterize his work, I contend that his metaphysics of subjective experience is instead rooted ultimately in plays of ambiguity. | 36 pages
Recommended Citation
Volz, Scott, "Between Here and There: The Ambiguous Ecologies of Charles Simonds" (2014). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 2756.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/2756