After 8 months of research, this installation uses relational objects of the site itself to build an environmental recollection of all the history that is encompassed in one geographical location, folding layers of spacetime down upon itself. The site was a large military complex that has documented reports of hauntings. Using light and line, I connect back to my research of the inhabitants and their history within the space. This is the same space in which the aforementioned defunct torpedo was built. This installation researches and maps not only my relationship to the site, but also the relationship to the hundreds of employees and community members that occupied the space in the 1940s.
Using a piece of ghost-hunting equipment that relays phonetic words based on electromagnetic readings of its surroundings, I use those words to weave a web of correlations back to my research through time, deciphering forgotten or hidden histories of the site. This device may produce any number of words, from names to numbers to materials. My research included pouring over a self-published newspaper that was produced in the 1940's at this site. I used the device to gather names and information that I could then physically draw a line to in my research, using the device as a potential transmitter of information from the present back to the past. A personal coincidence happened for me as well during this project - through family research, I became aware of a previously unknown fact that my paternal grandmother worked in a factory during World War 2 to produce nylon parachute line - an almost identical material to what I used in this series.
The installation includes: research, photographs, video, water from the Potomac River, buckets, bricks from the site, construction line, rope, batteries, other found objects, ghost hunting equipment, small library of books, small metal trash can, and a wood pallet.
Press:
11/04/15 An interactive selfie wall, banished Quakers, an experiment in the financial value of art, and a ghostly history of the Torpedo Factory. (via The Alexandria Patch)