in heaven i think i’ll live in a house is mixed media video installation intended for public installation. A television triptych plays loops of constantly shifting manipulated photographs of invented, impossible structures and spaces, along with images of man-made signage and mark-making. White altars are constructed from found materials to display the video loops, materials which include broken furniture and bouquets of flowers, as a temporary memorial to the negative spaces left by human beings.

All materials used were found or recycled over a period of nine months, broken into stages. The first stage, collecting “found spaces”, consisted of taking extended walks through various neighborhoods in Honolulu, photographing private residencies absent of human activity as well as forgotten spaces (below overpasses, dead ends, corners & edges) that were home to vestiges of human communication in the form of graffiti, worn signs & weathered flyers. The second stage consisted of assembling the residential images into digital collages of impossible spaces, and the others into an animated video loop played at a high frame rate mash up of marks made by humans. The final stage was preparing the physical installation by searching through trash left on roads for working television sets and broken furniture, which was then wheat-pasted and painted in white. Dead flowers were also slowly collected from the trash bins of a local cemetary, left to dry and finally painted white before exhibition.

Public installation view: