Excerpts from Creative Capital Grant 08 - 09. 

Clothing the Line is through the first round! Finalists Announced mid-September.

Project Title

Clothing The Line

Please describe your project in one sentence.

“Clothing the Line” is a Living Performance Installation--a roofless 17’ X 17’ X 17’ four wall ‘home’ made of thousands of clothes in a prominent public plaza or park that houses a perfectly decorated bedroom, living room, and kitchen featuring a performance charting the loss of a woman’s home.

Tell us about your project. (300 words)

In 2007 the Department of Homeless Services reports 38,220 homeless persons in NYC. Los Angeles Almanac reports 80,000 homeless persons in downtown LA alone. These are shocking figures about the cities I call home. “Clothing the Line” will be effective in any city with a significant homeless population, but for this proposal, I will focus on NYC.

On the first day of Summer, 2010, Central Park’s Great Lawn, a truss frame will be erected around a perfectly furnished studio apartment; magazines on the couch, bed made, table set for dinner….

In the Spring before, homeless persons are interviewed about how they lost their home. Audio recordings of each person’s story are played through headphones that are attached to articles of clothing. Each recorded story will be distributed to a player with headphones and into an article of clothing. Arts organizations around the city and at the structure will sell articles of clothing for $1 and articles of clothing with a recorded story for $10.

Purchased clothing is attached to vertical ropes and hung from the horizontal truss of the structure, beginning to create walls which visitors may pass through at any point. Purchased clothing with recorded stories and headphones is hung from the corners of the structure and played on loop every day from Noon to Sunset.

When 38,220 articles of clothing are sold(number of homeless persons in NYC) the apartment will be enclosed by clothing walls and free Nighttime performances will begin(Thursday–Sunday, . 9 - 10:30pm.)

Eleven three-minute scenes will be created and staged in the apartment portraying an older woman’s mental decline and her story of becoming homeless. One at a time visitors will push through the clothes, and enter the apartment. Sunset to 10:30pm Thursday–Sunday a visitor pays $5, pushes through the clothes, enters the apartment.  Alone with the old woman, enclosed by the ghosts of homeless persons under the NYC sky, the each person experiences woman performs one 3 minute scene.  Scenes are played at random. Therefore groups will all see different scenes and want to discuss them afterwards. giving each person an individual experience.

What final form(s) will your project take? (100 words)

Although I feel it will be more effective in cities with a substantial homeless population, “Clothing the Line” can effectively be created in any city in the world to help illuminate the problem of homelessness. The project can be manipulated tailored for each city for greater effectiveness. The structure/performance has potential to tour festival circuits as well as the ambitious community- created 3 month installation described above. As there have been many changes in the development of the form so far, I’m confident the project will continue to evolve as it is realized.

Place your work in context so that we may better evaluate it. (150 words)

In my work I intervene in the path of culture by creating original performances that reveal and question question and reveal the world around us. I create theatre of the imagination--a theatre that brings chills, breaks hearts, and ignites laughter, a highly spirited, visually spectacular, adventurous, and immediate theatre that speaks and listens to its audience, a theatre that calls for response from broad and diverse communities.

I love theatre that redefines live experience; Back to Back’s “Small Metal Objects,” Forced Entertainment’s “Bloody Mess,” De La Guarda’s “Villa Villa” and currently “Fuerzabruta.”

I love art that changes a city’sies landscape; Christo’s “Central Park Gates,” Claes Oldenburg’s “Spoonbridge,” and Jeff Koon’s “Puppy.”

I love artists who bring meaning to every day objects by displaying them; Duchamp’s ready mades, Tracey Emin’s “My Bed,” and Damien Hirst’s “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.”

How does your piece take an original approach to content and form? Be as specific as possible. (100 words)

“Clothing the Line” takes an innovative approach to content and form by…

- creating a controlled theatre venue in a public place.

- the set for the performance is bought by the public and their money supports a social cause.

- viewing one or more of the eleven scenes alone, at night, in Central Park, a viewer has --a personal experience that is only theirs.

The This public and collective approach to the works’ content and form contributes to an overall effect that lingers longer because of the above.  People experience a personal and individual connection with the piece that they want to discus with others. 

What kind of impact—aesthetic, intellectual, communal, civic and/or social—do you hope your project will have? (100 words).

“Clothing the Line” will have immediate aesthetic and long lasting social impact. People will become active artists of social change by helping build clothing walls and their money will go directly to helping the homeless. Volunteer booths could be set up around the installation to recruit people for Homeless Organizations. Overall, aVisitorsny visitor to the great lawn in the summer of 2010, people will immediately become aware of the amount of homeless people in their community and hopefully this knowledge will inspire them to become personally invested in addressing the realities of their localir homeless community.

How might your proposed project act as a catalyst for your artistic and professional growth? (100 words)

This is a key point in my artistic career. Thus far I have created my work solely for theatres but I have been wanteding to present my work in a public space. To implement and install this project with maximum impact on its community I will grow more than I can imagine. The challenges I will overcome coordinating the installation, creating/writing/directing the performance, and rallying organizations to back the piece will propel me to a new artistic level.  At the end of this project I will be better prepared and have more freedom to push the boundaries of theatrical experience.

Who are the audiences for your work and how do you hope to reach them? (100 words)

By placing the piece in Central Parks Great Lawn Clothing the Lline will reach thousands of people throughout the summer; lunch break business people, dedicated outdoors types, leisure seekers, and tourists.  My hope is that it will become a destination not only for art lovers and social activists but also anyone who is for persons who are curious to see what is new in central park.