* [Asterisk] dismantles the notion of 'investment' by demanding its participants to face one another as their duty, and as their policy. With the presence of a functional table and chairs in the shape of an asterisk, an audience is not only invited to experience the work, but a stage is set for them to redistribute and reassign how and what they authorize. Participators face one another within a unified, central structure as they inadvertently 'perform' professional meetings in a windowed storefront.

What happens when we make eye contact and when our bodies face one another? How does institutional power impact the intimacy of creative intention and the liberation that comes through honest and open communication? Should convention have built in to it a promise and invitation to overturn it, to interrupt it, and to continually redefine it? By facing one another physically and ideologically, we hold ourselves to the challenge of truth and commitment-- choices that can potentially create a shift in individual and collective consciousness.

Tunneling below the synthetic wood surface of * are dark, cavernous avenues of shelter and protection, but also of exit and diffusion. There is a space for the body to negotiate beside this structure and space below to undermine it.

By building out instead of up, * examines the revised role of the feminine in the context of patriarchal Nixon-era office design. The perception of the 'official' disembodies our connection to internal power, encouraging enterprise to rest in the hands of a few. * offers an exception to the 'official' through a mocking critique of this aesthetic, and through the realized nature of its form and title.

Funded by Art in General's new radical panel called The Generals, whose purpose is to propose and organize alternative paradigms in programming, this desk was created in an effort to answer the request for a formal meeting table used to consider and initiate progressive approaches to accessing a local arts community and dialogue. * provides four legs for each General, and a fifth leg for the unspoken, unrecognized, missing voice and body. It represents the metaphorical presence of the alternative, the notation, the exception, and the opportunity for otherness. This presence holds equal and independent weight in this ulterior form of authority and decision-making. The fifth leg is there to keep this revolution in check, as much as it is to participate in it.

* is the second work in a two-part project exploring the nature of taking a stand while taking a seat; the deliberate and committed choice of mobilizing aggressive political and social change.

*
2005
table: 243.8 (length) x 243.8 (width) x 91.4 (height)
chairs: 40.6 (length) x 40.6 (width) x 45.7 (height)
wood, fabric, contact paper, hardware, marker