[Excerpt from the Brochure for the 2002 exhibition 1822 at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans]

Introduction

In the fall of 2001, New Orleans artists Stephen Paul Day and Sibylle Peretti were approached about creating a site-specific installation for the fall of 2002, to be exhibited in the Contemporary Arts Center’s First Floor Galleries. Initially, we talked about a “him, her, and them” concept, where each artist would present work that was made individually, as well as devote a section to collaboration. Within very little time, however, Day and Peretti decided to operate entirely in partnership by developing one installation that would embody their shared responses to the exhibition space, as well as to the time frame of the creation and implementation of the exhibition. The result is 1822, a five-gallery site-specific installation that the artists conceived “as a kind of entertainment machine that functions in some way to alter one’s way of questioning, to disturb and to enlighten one’s afternoon.”

Day and Peretti began their creative activity for this project in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City. As artists, they felt impelled to channel their horror, grief, mourning, and questioning into the construction of an installation that might help them, and others, with the healing process. According to the artists, “Since 9/11, a new kind of timeline has been established that will affect how we view our world and our inner selves.” With this in mind, they have divided the galleries into five rooms that represent the stages of a rebirth involved in healing. Room 1, dedicated to children, refers to play, wonder, and innocence. Room II concerns adolescence, a time when reason (associated with the male archetype of the Jungian anima/animus duality) begins to provide the answers to life’s mysteries. Room III is a place where intuition and emotion (feminine archetypes) are allowed to flourish. Room IV is like a chapel; it is a dedicated space for spiritual questioning. Room V, named “Heidi’s Room” after the fictional young girl who was a nurturing caretaker, is a place for coalescence, where the different aspects of the self become integrated, and dualities such as male/female, reason/emotion, technology/nature, unite to achieve maturity, responsibility, and wholeness. 1822 was chosen as the title for this project because we are now in the second year of the new timeline since 9/11-the connection here being that twice 911 equals 1822.

ROOM I: CHILDREN’S PLAYROOM

The oversized children’s blocks that fill this room invite the viewer to experience the sensation of being like Alice wandering through Wonderland, where scale-much like a child’s imagination-is devoid of logic. On the sides of the blocks, Day and Peretti display the digitally restored faces of diseased or deformed children who have been “visually cured” using a computer. Adjacent sides of the blocks house repeated images of a bird tending its nest, a hand in a gesture of reaching or searching, letters of the alphabet, and a variety of emblematic tattoos. Collectively, these images are intended to inspire narratives to be scripted in viewers’ minds.

At one end of the gallery, the artists have placed a box filled with an array of toy objects. These, too, are aimed at instilling imaginative musing. Close inspection reveals the box to be a dentist’s chest, so the toys must be offerings from the Tooth Fairy.

ROOM II: MARCEL DUCHAMP’S GARDEN HOUSE, TONY’S LOG, THE POND

Divided into three components, this room concerns areas of examination, exploration, and the inquisitive nature of adolescence. Marcel Duchamp’s Garden House is an industrial-looking structure where Day and Peretti imagine the artist Marcel Duchamp spending his youth, exploring themes that would follow him throughout his career. Around 1912, Duchamp exhibited his first “readymades,” everyday objects presented as sculptures, the very act of which alters an object’s meaning. Because it resembles a commercially prefabricated building, Day and Peretti consider the house itself to be a type of readymade.

Duchamp is often called “the father of conceptual art” because his art originated from a belief in the primacy of the ideas that spawned it. Driven by content issues, Duchamp, in fact, created many of the first conceptual, site-specific installations. These include Mile of String (1942), where he filled Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery (New York) with a labyrinthine string maze, and a project known as Etant donnés: 1° la chute d”eau, 2° le gaz d”éclairage… (Given: 1° the waterfall, 2° the illuminating gas…), which he and two accomplices worked on in secrecy from 1946-1966. The latter (currently housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) consists of a closed door with two small peepholes. To approach the door, viewers must step on a mat that activates lights and motors. Upon peering through the holes, we see only fragments of another world that includes a nude female holding an illuminated gas lamp and a landscape with a waterfall.

Day and Peretti consider Duchamp to be their “art mascot.” To honor him they have filled the interior of his garden house with a shelf of books, a model of Etant donnés, a video, and other references to Duchamp’s life.

Tony’s Log is an autobiographical work, based on Day’s own remembrances from his youth of finding girlie magazines in a forest. Resting on top of a pile of vintage erotic magazines, the log houses an embedded video monitor that shows manipulated footage of the young protagonist from the TV series “Lassie” appearing to have a similar experience. Metaphorically, the narrative suggests a connection between loss of innocence and contact with nature.

The Pond focuses on self-examination, as a life-size wax figure considers its own image coming to life on a video monitor that floats beneath the pond’s surface. In that the natural elements of this section are either fabricated (plastic) or virtual (videotaped), and real sunlight is blocked by transparencies that cover the nearby window, the work raises questions about the difficulties of finding direct contact with nature in our technologically-oriented world.

ROOM III: SUICIDE NOTES, DOORKNOBS & WATERFALLS, POEM

As a complementary counterpoint to the industrial and technological flavor of Room II, Room III emphasizes poetry, human touch, and feelings.

Lining a wall of this space are the Suicide Notes, 66 napkins that have been written on or painted upon with small poems that Day and Peretti see as “a kind of last word of anonymous artists, positive echoes of ideas or thoughts left as a gesture of love, not out of despair, but as a kind of gift.” Across the room from the Suicide Notes is Doorknobs and Waterfalls, a series of “DO NOT DISTURB” doorknob hangers with images of renamed waterfalls, a poetic reference to our endangered environment. On another wall, the artists have mounted POEM, a large graphic work in which a 19th-century poem, entitled The Poor Babes in the Wood, is superimposed over digitally manipulated images of gunshot wound victims.

Day and Peretti have also placed three vitrines in this room, each of which displays poetic objects. In one, a clear glass urn is used as a vessel for strawberry leaves, an idea that was generated by a poem that ends with a line about birds covering two lost children with strawberry leaves. A second vitrine contains a small monk’s coat with a poem sewn onto its surface. The poem, written by Day and Peretti, is about the dedication of St. Francis (who appears in the next room of the installation) to all living creatures. In the last vitrine is a stack of wax books that refer to artists’ notebooks, suggesting that artists are the conveyers of significant information, such as the poems contained in the Suicide Notes.

On the other side of one of the walls of Room III, and still conceived as part of it, Day and Peretti will create changing installations, one for each month during the exhibition, that celebrate popular culture traditions as forms of poetry. For October, the month in which we observe Halloween, they have installed pumpkins carved with poetic phrases.

ROOM IV: ST. FRANCIS

Once a wealthy man, St. Francis held a devout faith that led him to relinquish his possessions, take a vow of poverty, and devote his life to preaching. According to popular legend, he preached so eloquently that even birds would listen. Inspired by this reading of the saint’s life, Day and Peretti have combined nature and technology themes explored in Room II—to place spiritual inquiry into a theatrical setting that is contemporary and complex. Images of St. Francis are technologically produced, projected on a floating cloth and screened on a video monitor. Negating an art gallery’s usual function, the artists have brought in a live tree to represent nature, but it appears to have sprouted thirty-three noisy bird clocks that combine with audio taped sounds of chirping birds to create a dissonant and unsettling spectacle-metaphoric, perhaps, of the confusion that accompanies spiritual doubt.

ROOM V: HEIDI’S ROOM, 1822 MUSEUM

In the final room of the installation, Day and Peretti lead us into the concluding stages of the healing process as personified by Heidi, the fictional young Swiss girl known for her warm heart and compassion. Heidi is an attractive heroine for the artists because she is universally recognized, yet, on a more personal level, she shares a European heritage with Peretti, who is German. Seated with her back to us before a wall mural that depicts mountains and fire, Heidi represents the hope of recovery in the face of devastation. Her nurturing gifts are suggested by a montage of waterfalls shown on a video monitor that is neatly lodged within her back.

The 1822 Museum was conceived as a fitting finale to the entertainment machine. Here visitors will find souvenir objects that reflect the themes of the installation, such as altered children’s books, altered or newly created 8-track tapes, and literature about “Club S+S,” pertaining to the ongoing adventures of “Stephen and Sibylle.”