Make Your Bed (2020)
Make Your Bed is a performance work that occurred October 21 2020 in the University of Ottawa’s student gallery, Gallery 115.
This work uses twenty hot water bottles and five kettles to create a path from the gallery’s official presentation space to its storage room. The performance starts when I ask audience members to turn on the kettles plugged in nearby. I am sitting on a bench at one side of the gallery. I remove my socks and shoes. Now barefoot and kettles boiled, I begin filling the hot water bottles and lay them on the floor, marking a footpath to the gallery’s storage room. As I proceed, I ask the audience to hand me kettles, in order to keep on my intended path. All comply. The hot water bottles were linked together in fives. As I fill the bottles, I hold them in front or beside me. In these positions before I lay them down, the bottles match my height. I only walk on them and avoid the floor.
I continue this process in the storage room. Some audience members join me. The backroom is noticeably cooler than the gallery space. THE FLOOR IS LAVA is spelt out in vinyl lettering on two dividing walls near the back of the storage room. Once I reach the walls on my path, I ask an audience member to turn the lights off. Then, I plug in an extension cord that illuminates a disco ball hidden behind the dividing walls, and its light floods the space. After a minute, I use the path created by the hot water bottles to reach a waiting boombox. I turn it on and the song Walking On The Moon by The Police plays. This combination provides some levity to the physicality of the work. I leave following the same path I used to arrive in the space.
The performance was documented on October 21 2020 by Cara Tierney and on December 7 2020 by Adrienne Row-Smith. The email addresses the parameters for viewing the performance while following Provincial and University protocols for COVID-19 safety. The email acts as a touchstone for understanding the documentation and subsequent installation, here.
This work uses twenty hot water bottles and five kettles to create a path from the gallery’s official presentation space to its storage room. The performance starts when I ask audience members to turn on the kettles plugged in nearby. I am sitting on a bench at one side of the gallery. I remove my socks and shoes. Now barefoot and kettles boiled, I begin filling the hot water bottles and lay them on the floor, marking a footpath to the gallery’s storage room. As I proceed, I ask the audience to hand me kettles, in order to keep on my intended path. All comply. The hot water bottles were linked together in fives. As I fill the bottles, I hold them in front or beside me. In these positions before I lay them down, the bottles match my height. I only walk on them and avoid the floor.
I continue this process in the storage room. Some audience members join me. The backroom is noticeably cooler than the gallery space. THE FLOOR IS LAVA is spelt out in vinyl lettering on two dividing walls near the back of the storage room. Once I reach the walls on my path, I ask an audience member to turn the lights off. Then, I plug in an extension cord that illuminates a disco ball hidden behind the dividing walls, and its light floods the space. After a minute, I use the path created by the hot water bottles to reach a waiting boombox. I turn it on and the song Walking On The Moon by The Police plays. This combination provides some levity to the physicality of the work. I leave following the same path I used to arrive in the space.
The performance was documented on October 21 2020 by Cara Tierney and on December 7 2020 by Adrienne Row-Smith. The email addresses the parameters for viewing the performance while following Provincial and University protocols for COVID-19 safety. The email acts as a touchstone for understanding the documentation and subsequent installation, here.
| laurapaolini_makeyourbed_longstatement.pdf |
| caratierney_scheduleemail_merged.pdf |