214 sq ft : an installation
The Center for Ethnography, Department of Anthropology and Claire Trevor School of
the Arts present
214 SQ. FT : an installation
April 9-16, 2012
Social Science Plaza B, UC Irvine
Social Science Plaza B, UC Irvine
Opening reception & Conversation
Monday, April 9, 2012
4:00-5:30 p.m.
Social Science Plaza B, UC Irvine
Social Science Plaza B, UC Irvine
Created by Christine Hegel-Cantarella (Assistant Research Specialist, UCI Department
of Anthropology and Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion)& Luke
Hegel-Cantarella (Assistant Professor, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, Department
of Drama)
Created in association with the Project Hope Alliance with special support from the
Friend Family.
Documentary footage courtesy of Alexandra Pelosi
Properties design by Tiffany Anguiano
Sound installation by Jeff Polunas
214 sq ft is an immersive installation created for Project Hope Alliance, a non-profit
organization that serves the Orange County, CA homeless population through the Project
Hope School and Family Stability Program. It was intended as a reflection on the experience
of homelessness among the working poor, many of whom take shelter in low-budget motels
across Orange County. For such families a motel room is an impermanent home, made
homelike through the personal objects that fill it and the quotidian activities of
home-life within its walls.
The project stages a motel room in different public spaces. The installation, roughly
214 square feet, includes the furniture typical of motels as well as found objects
representing the personal belongings of a composite family. Images and personal narratives
of motel-life, as derived from footage from the Alexandra Pelosi documentary "Homeless:
The Motel Kids of Orange County," are embedded in the space through multi-media. Audio
and video recordings emanate discretely from objects (lamps, paintings), and portions
of narratives are printed on bedding, inscribed in the wallpaper, and etched on the
furniture.
As part of the Center for Ethnography Rethinking Design Series, the installation
is a prototype for interrogating intersections between ethnographic inquiry and aesthetic
processes and an experiment in the use of design to inform ethnography. 214 Sq. Ft.
is being sited at UCI to instigate discussion among students and faculty across the
disciplines about modalities of representation and inquiry and the meanings of transience,
home, and inequality.
For further information, please contact Sandy Cushman, scushman@uci.edu or 949-824-3344.
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