What is left is felt was collaboratively developed at Cornell University as part of my advanced digital studio, Empathy Academy: Social Practice and the Problem of Objects. Through a series of small public interventions and reflections on the social life of objects in the context of the museum, students in this studio organized a collection of cast-off items as a crowd-sourced still life that will continue fill the gallery space over the course of the exhibition.
Drawing on notions of the art object as relic, artifact, fragment and implement, the room-sized display is an on-going invitation to museum visitors to directly contribute to the exhibition by contributing their own objects which are resonant with personal meaning but no longer serve a immediate or significant purpose in their everyday life.
The formation of What is left is felt emerges, in part, as a material and conceptual response to the display of works from the museum’s collection that preceded it in the gallery. By identifying the hidden social relationships inherent in display and then seeking representation of these relationships in object form, the current installation synthesizes the tension between form and content apparent in the work previously on view and in opening the work up to the public. Martha Rosler’s “Semiotics of the Kitchen” in the video room is the sole work that remains on display from this previous group, providing a point of entry for the indexical arrangement of the collected objects that now hang in the project space.
As a collection of cast-off, yet significant objects now separated from their previous owners, the installation investigates our contemporary attachment to the things—whether purchased, made or displayed. In a world with endless opportunity to consume and accumulate objects, leading to the many challenges society faces with landfills and oceans choked with plastic debris, this installation asks us to consider the moral dimension of consumption, collection and nostalgia.
The initial objects hanging in the space were acquired anonymously through a series of collection boxes distributed across campus in student dormitories and halls, where an (red) object could be donated, tagged and categorized. After the exhibition ends, all objects in good condition will be 3D scanned, documented and donated to local charities.