On July 29th, I once again begin grave digging with Randall Packer - this time at The Arlington Arts Center, where the piece America's Grave will be included Picturing Politics - an exhibition curated by Rex Weil.
With each incarnation, the work expands. The solitary grave, first exhibited in American University's Katzen Museum in January 2006, expanded into a grave and cosmology in the autumn of 2006, down in Athens, GA. Last spring, the work was "exhibited on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building", safe within the confines of Provisions Library. This time, the work finally expands into the story boards for the multimedia opera Randall has been composing steadily since 2001. While the final edit of the work has not been completed, elements of the score will be imposed in the grave, along with the various regions of hell, as transcribed from Dante's Inferno.
This is also the first time that the work will be resented in perfect isolation from other work. In the next two weeks I prepare lighting, arrange for carpeting, collect the necessary materials to build a wall, and once again prepare the skeleton of The Grave. Instead of being an "object" of art, as in previous incarnations where the work could be viewed as sculpture, the work is positioned into a theatrical environment.
Installation begins July 29 and runs through Aug. 14 - plenty of time to lay 600 square feet of carpet, build 320 square feet of wall, install 20 lights, and unload half a tone of dirt onto a raised platform.
The exhibition runs Aug. 15 - Sept. 27.
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