Transfers (2009)
Transfers depicts two performers transferring one full pitcher of milk through the interface of their mouths, to fill an empty pitcher. The action repeats when the first pitcher is emptied and the other is full. This simply choreographed performance evokes tender embraces and the nurture of milk. Yet the transfer of fluids from mouth to mouth and back again adds a layer of repugnance, gently pushing the boundaries of bodily permeability.
Slide →Looping High Definition Video, 30 min, silent.
Video still.
Transfers, Live (2009)
Transfers was performed live during an exhibition opening. A full pitcher of milk was transferred to another pitcher, mouthful by mouthful, among four sequential performers. When the first transfer was complete, the pitcher of milk was transferred in the reverse direction. The performers melded with the art-going public, conversing with the audience and moving around the space.The action was therefore not a spectacle, but slowly revealed itself through glimpses of gestures, both intimate and functional.
Slide →Performance with milk, mouths, 2 hours, silent.
More on this work →
Transfers, Sweet (2009)
The artist marked the gallery walls with a barely visible line of sweet flavor, level with the height of her mouth. Visitors were invited to find and taste this flavor along the perimeters of the gallery space.
Slide →Sweet flavor painted on wall, approximately 53" from the floor, dimensions variable.
More on this work →
Traces (2009)
Traces is a renewable sculpture of the artist’s own disembodied kidney, cast in frozen spit. Every two hours a new frozen organ is put on display, only to melt and drip away. The artist carefully traced the topography of her internal organ from a 3D MRI in order to materialize its form outside of her body. Traces is a poetic deterritorialization of medical biotechnologies, organs without bodies and fleshy displacements.
Slide →Artist’s hands cast in aluminum & artist’s kidney cast in frozen spit from a 3D MRI.
More on this work →
Life Cycle of a Common Weed (2007)
The artist’s own contaminated blood supply serves as a source of nitrogen-giving fertilizer to the common dandelion, itself a source of medicinal and nutritive value. The artist can give to the dandelions what would be a danger to any human, in a reciprocal plant-human exchange of sustenance.
Slide →Performance with dandelions & drawn human blood. Photograph by Alia Farid
Life Cycle of a Common Weed (2008-09)
The public is solicited to fertilize dandelions with their blood, in exchange for dandelion root tea and seedlings. The collective pooling of blood from the audience transforms Life Cycle of a Common Weed into a site for the private and public to converge; a space to encounter and analyze anxieties. Intimate dialogue is a natural consequence of this interface.
Slide →Public fertilization of dandelions with human blood in exchange for a dandelion sprout. Photographs by Sara Smith and Gina Siepel.
Marshmallow Crash (2008)
Marshmallow Crash depicts an American Pie character as she violently confronts an oversized marshmallow amidst an idyllic pastoral landscape. The light, fluffy buoyancy promised by the giant marshmallow is never quite delivered as the character repeatedly impacts the marshmallow and is left marked, exhausted and unfulfilled.
Slide →Performance of crashing into a giant marshmallow trampoline, digital video 8 min.
Production still.
The Marshmallow Suicide (2008)
In The Marshmallow Suicide, a desperately nostalgic American Pie character slowly gluttonizes a giant marshmallow while repeating the chorus of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” The cathartic repetition impels the figure to float away on the lake atop the marshmallow, and subsequently drown herself in an act of despair.
The performance employs elements of American iconography: Miss Firecracker, the painterly summer landscape, a pop song everyone loves and knows well (but only the chorus), and a mass of fluffy sweet nothingness— the marshmallow. In a slow, violent convergence of patriotic nostalgia, the hopes and promises of America are devoured, supplicated and put to death.
Performance with giant marshmallow, digital video 8 min.
Production still, photography by Monika Sziladi.
The Marshmallow Suicide (2008)
In The Marshmallow Suicide, a desperately nostalgic American Pie character slowly gluttonizes a giant marshmallow while repeating the chorus of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” The cathartic repetition impels the figure to float away on the lake atop the marshmallow, and subsequently drown herself in an act of despair.
The performance employs elements of American iconography: Miss Firecracker, the painterly summer landscape, a pop song everyone loves and knows well (but only the chorus), and a mass of fluffy sweet nothingness— the marshmallow. In a slow, violent convergence of patriotic nostalgia, the hopes and promises of America are devoured, supplicated and put to death.
Performance with giant marshmallow, digital video 8 min.
Production still.
Boobalicious (2008)
The ice cream social Boobalicious afforded a setting in which to encounter the contradictions within our physical, psychological and ethical relationship to reproductive technologies. Boobalicious interrogates socially acceptable boundaries of the body at a time when eggs, sperm and babies are part of a global market, yet it still causes us discomfort to eat one of the most nutritious foods on earth: human breast milk.
Slide →An ice cream social with kulfi-flavored ice cream made from human breast milk.
Hepatophagy (2008)
Hepatophagy is an artist’s multiple commissioned for the Whitney Museum’s “Initial Public Offerings” & given to the public for free. The Delftware-style coupe plate depicts a portrait of the artist engaging in auto-cannibalism. It is accompanied by a small chocolate truffle cast from a 3D MRI of the artist’s liver.
Slide →Illustrated porcelain & cast chocolate. 4.25”
Viral Confections (2006-07)
These chocolates illustrate the protein structure of the hepatitis C virus. A model of the virus was printed from a magnified 3D cryoelectron micrograph of the virus from the Protein Data Bank. The chocolates were then cast into this molecular form. The truffles do not carry hepatitis C. Each one was lovingly handmade from 72% Belgian roasted cocoa.
Desire to eat the enticing chocolates is mixed with a repulsion for the infectious virus. It serves as a synecdoche for the body, coming out of the blood and going back in through the stomach, while also serving as an agent of information rather than infection. This unnerving dialectic has proved to be an exciting and approachable way to ignite discussion and facilitate awareness in public environments.
Edible chocolates cast into the protein structure of the hepatitis C virus.
More on this work →
Viral Confections (2006-07)
These chocolates illustrate the protein structure of the hepatitis C virus. A model of the virus was printed from a magnified 3D cryoelectron micrograph of the virus from the Protein Data Bank. The chocolates were then cast into this molecular form. The truffles do not carry hepatitis C. Each one was lovingly handmade from 72% Belgian roasted cocoa.
Desire to eat the enticing chocolates is mixed with a repulsion for the infectious virus. It serves as a metonym for the body, coming out of the blood and going back in through the stomach, while also serving as an agent of information rather than infection. This unnerving dialectic has proved to be an exciting and approachable way to ignite discussion and facilitate awareness in public environments.
Viral Shelter (2007-08)
“Tea Party to Befriend a Virus” is a tactical performance in which participants are invited to consume the hepatitis C truffles and discuss the virus in a non-medical environment. The individual encounters and conversations at each site are actively productive, if ephemeral. The tea parties are held in a “Viral Shelter,” a geodesic dome that shares the same architecture as the hepatitis C virus.
Slide →Gallery 400, Chicago, “Biological Agents.” Photograph Chelsea Tonelli Knight.
Viral Domes (2007)
Viral capsids were magnified and fashioned into geodesic greenhouses to grow therapeutic herbs for each virus.
The Beam Summer Camp commissioned this collaborative project for which I designed domes based on the protein structures of four viruses. Many viruses organize their proteins according to geodesic patterns. Among these are the hepatitis C virus, HIV, the rhinovirus (cold-flu) and the herpes virus.
Over the course of the project, the counselors and 60 campers interpreted and constructed these sculptural shelters after my designs. They learned building and creative crafts, cared for plants, discovered viruses and microbes, and explored the territories of their own bodies as fodder for art-making. They also contributed the fantastical “Beam” virus, representing their own infectious qualities. The Viral Domes became their shelters, playspaces and activity centers while still inspiring the yuck factor.
http://caitlinberrigan.com/beam.html
http://www.beamcamp.com
Viral Domes (2007)
Viral capsids were magnified and fashioned into geodesic greenhouses to grow therapeutic herbs for each virus.
The Beam Summer Camp commissioned this collaborative project for which I designed domes based on the protein structures of four viruses. Many viruses organize their proteins according to geodesic patterns. Among these are the hepatitis C virus, HIV, the rhinovirus (cold-flu) and the herpes virus.
Over the course of the project, the counselors and 60 campers interpreted and constructed these sculptural shelters after my designs. They learned building and creative crafts, cared for plants, discovered viruses and microbes, and explored the territories of their own bodies as fodder for art-making. They also contributed the fantastical “Beam” virus, representing their own infectious qualities. The Viral Domes became their shelters, playspaces and activity centers while still inspiring the yuck factor.
http://caitlinberrigan.com/beam.html
http://www.beamcamp.com
Viral Domes (2007)
Viral capsids were magnified and fashioned into geodesic greenhouses to grow therapeutic herbs for each virus.
The Beam Summer Camp commissioned this collaborative project for which I designed domes based on the protein structures of four viruses. Many viruses organize their proteins according to geodesic patterns. Among these are the hepatitis C virus, HIV, the rhinovirus (cold-flu) and the herpes virus.
Over the course of the project, the counselors and 60 campers interpreted and constructed these sculptural shelters after my designs. They learned building and creative crafts, cared for plants, discovered viruses and microbes, and explored the territories of their own bodies as fodder for art-making. They also contributed the fantastical “Beam” virus, representing their own infectious qualities. The Viral Domes became their shelters, playspaces and activity centers while still inspiring the yuck factor.
http://caitlinberrigan.com/beam.html
http://www.beamcamp.com
The Smelling Committee (2006-07)
Inspired by the olfactory bravado of the original Smelling Committee, we led an historical simulacrum of the 1891 adventure by conducting an olfactory mapping of a corner of Brooklyn. The tour highlighted the largest urban oil spill, which continues to spread beneath Brooklyn 50 years after it occurred. Collaboration with Michael McBean.
The trek invited reflection upon the ephemeral, odiferous fabric of Brooklyn neighborhoods by actively smelling sites, discussing the neurological structure of smell, a natural history of odor, pollution and industry in Brooklyn, and personal smell stories.
Performers explain the link of odor to emotional memory at the laundromat during the Conflux Festival. Photograph by James Maher.
More on this work →http://caitlinberrigan.com/smellingcommittee.html
smellingcommittee.org
The Smelling Committee (2006-07)
Inspired by the olfactory bravado of the original Smelling Committee, we led an historical simulacrum of the 1891 adventure by conducting an olfactory mapping of a corner of Brooklyn. The tour highlighted the largest urban oil spill, which continues to spread beneath Brooklyn 50 years after it occurred. Collaboration with Michael McBean.
The trek invited reflection upon the ephemeral, odiferous fabric of Brooklyn neighborhoods by actively smelling sites, discussing the neurological structure of smell, a natural history of odor, pollution and industry in Brooklyn, and personal smell stories.
Participants donning “smell enhancers” to isolate the senses during the Conflux Festival. Photograph by James Maher.
More on this work →http://caitlinberrigan.com/smellingcommittee.html
smellingcommittee.org
