#icalled
New York, NY | 07/2016 - 11/2016a deployable installation and media apparatus to scene new performances of political speech. This architecture of protest appropriates new signifiers of power to occasion, amplify, and re circulate the will of the people against the whims of a CEO.
As an instagrammable call to arms, this multimedia scenography empowers citizens (and those to whom the privilege of the vote is denied) to voice resistance in three simultaneous fora: directly to members of government, on social media, and on the street.
In an effort to secure the white-house-cum-penthouse within the public domain and interest, we have appropriated the idiosyncratic finishes of Trump-branded space to host other political speech: gilded props riff on the chintzy Versailles decoration of the Trump-branded residence and a printed wallpaper photo backdrop incorporates his own peachy visage. In doing so, we ask how the power of aesthetics—in addition to the power of space and occupation—might exert discourses overlooked by legislators and the executive?
A hashtagged video message to a member of government is the product and record of this occupation, another in an emerging genre of political selfies. #icalled exploits the minimal political cachet of the #ivoted selfie to examine how less glamorous and non-ritual activities of political participation inhabit the aesthetic lexicon of performative social media.
Rarely is protest afforded its own interior, beyond those it claims for itself (the sit in, the cumulative space forged by a crowd in the street). #icalled establishes a public and mobile inside for hosting political speech against powers historically formalized by architecture.
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design | installation | public intervention
a project of f-architecture
partners: virginia black, gabrielle printz
installed at: forward union fair - 12/02/2016
the new school - 01/20/2017
morgan library & museum w/ MAS - 10/09/2017
