DWELLING IN PERENNIAL DREAMS
Dwelling in Perennial Dreams, 2010/2012, Three videos of three Thai orphans, each on two monitors, mounted in wood cradles, supported by MAX/MSP and microcontroller on Mac mini. Cradle size: 79 x 114 x 84 cm. (each). A pregnant woman performs in the installation as well as viewers are invited to rock the cradles. Individual exhibition at Location One, New York, USA, 2011.
A volunteer pregnant woman performs in Dwelling in Perennial Dreams, rocking the cradles to put the babies back to sleep after they wake up and cry. The performance of the pregnant woman is a metaphor for the real becoming fake, just as the virtual babies inside the cradles are a metaphor for the fake becoming real. Real and fake can communicate with each other within the space of art.
Dwelling in Perennial Dreams is an interactive installation using the traditional mechanism of cradles to invite the audience to imagine caring for Thai orphaned babies. Two monitors displaying videos of the upper and lower part of a baby sleeping sit within each cradle. Each baby sleeps for 15 minutes, then wakes up and cries. The audience participates by rocking them back to sleep. The audience can also wake the babies up if they make a loud noise, as sensors pick up noises from the audience. One crying baby can wake the others, showing how we are all interconnected in a community. Waking is a metaphor for the rough awakening to the reality of life. By pacifying the babies, the audience is simultaneously calming and oppressing them.
Dwelling in Perennial Dreams is derived from Kawow, a popular Thai lullaby about two species of birds, reinterpreting the story in an interactive installation in which the orphaned Thai babies are taken to another land.