THESIS STATEMENT
19 April 2012
6500 Kelvin: Colder Than Vertical Daylight reflects my interest in the structures of a material world that indicate instruction and power. It is important to me to closely read the structure of spaces I have been patterned to inhabit and to break down their physical constituents for interpretation. I believe that no site is beyond specificity. Drawing out the specifics of those sites that attempt to cloak their pedagogical conceit in the guise of prefabrication and mechanical reproduction is primary among my aspirations in the work. At UCLA, I have tried to focus my research upon the parameters of a world defined by acoustic ceiling panels. Expressing a consciousness for my place and expected performance within that world is the work being done here.
The articulation – the expression of materials re-presented – is intended to be critical. My negotiations with the institutions of identity, class, and commerce and to the site of this presentation is a skeptical one. Consequently, engaging this material formally and mechanically beyond its normative use and presenting it in the university gallery is fitting. It connects the natures of the corporate offices and other institutional spaces to the gallery in a way that overlays their complexities and anxieties.
Ceiling panels resonate with a deep unnoticed instability - suspended ceilings are indicative of powers beyond. Maybe this comes from religion and mysticisms that place powerful life-giving figures at elevation and the condemned to lowness, and from the advantages of higher ground in warfare. But wherever the genesis, institutional drop-ceiling systems are universally understood within the developed world as defining spaces of commerce and tiered bureaucracy. That suspended ceilings hide the nervous systems of power: HVAC, surveillance, IT cabling, electricity, life support and are designed to absorb noise, quieting work space to allow efficient concentration with minimal disruption – these things are sensible. The sky above an ICU bed, a classroom full of Hong-Kong nationals studying in a Canadian boarding school, and System White itself, silently, efficiently replicating all over us – with what abstraction, what pressure, could be applied to make sense of such things?
Echoes of gunship diplomacy still bounce.White-collar-war-waged is synthetic; at 6500 Kelvin it is Colder than Vertical Daylight.