“I have always been interested in how people display their neuroses, how embarrassment is something we have in common, triggered by our own personal histories. At the same time my own nervousness keeps things at a distance - seemingly remote, often times couched in metaphor. An example of this is how space is arranged - how intimacy is orchestrated and how we the audience/public become unknown performers. There is admittedly a bit of harshness to this approach, but I think of it as a perversion which accompanies my tendency towards voyeurism rather than malice.
Whatever the form, the work considers the relationship of the social/political world to the private psychological one. My approach is to combine humor and cynicism to zoom in and out of the conditions which organize us as a culture, thereby hoping to affect us as individuals. The adage of ‘what you do in public is different than what you do in the privacy of your own home’ explains how and why my interest in public space has moved from the street to the institution to inside the domestic envioirnment. I try to highlight and confuse the differences between these sites in an attempt to promote a social breakdown of content and context.
The drawings in this collection date from 1991-2002 and display a thinking processs which is applied to a range of contexts. Some of these have been built; some were project proposals; most are random thoughts for improbable ideas. The chapters divide the work into categories which organize aspects of urban life. The built projects punctuate these areas of interest.” – Andrea Blum
In English and French.