a m.a.s.h. project
(with the aid of city trees)



uncertainties
OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2005
mixed-media installation (two-channel video of performance, sharpie drawings on paper)

I search for tree stumps in New York City. I count the rings on the cross-sections and record the numbers. I play m.a.s.h. with the numbers. m.a.s.h. is a children's game not unlike the folded paper fortune teller. One plays in order to be presented a future scenario. I learned the game as a young girl conditioned with normative categories such as pet, number of children, honeymoon location, etc… Here, I make my categories and choices completely absurd, ending up with Spongebob Squarepants as a my boss, or Lindsay Lohan as nemesis... The trees act as indicators for dispensable pictures for my future. If I am dissatisfied with the results, I can replace it by finding another stump and playing another game. I am engaging with contingency more than nature. Like swiss-knifed hearts on tree veneers, stumps exist because of man, as do the constructed categories that I do away with. It appears that I am giving myself to chance but within the context of my own constructed system which I also break. It appears that I am giving myself to chance but with potential results from my very own pool of references. The search footage has been shown with or without overlayed sounds of sirens (depending on whether or not I feel the urge to mock my urgency), recorded from the traffic just along the entrance to Central Park, where the majority of the stumps were found.

© 2005-2006 emmy catedral.

This was shown as a single channel video at a temporary space in Chelsea, sporadically for two weeks in a D.I.Y. group show with The Brackish Waters collective in March 2007, and again for 2nd Avenue Poetry's reading series in April 2007 at Lolita Bar in The Lower East Side, as an installation with a two channel projection of the game and search, and completed sharpie m.a.s.h. drawings.

RETURN