Shelter or Playground: The House of Dust at the Schindler House
Jasmin Blasco
Furniture is Something Soft Between You and The House
2019
Foam, spandex, Nylon straps
Jasmin Blasco’s sculptural intervention examines the interplay between knowing and sensing, performing and viewing, domestic and social space. A mediating entity, Furniture is Something Soft You Put Between You And The House invites viewers to lower their gaze and share their personal space. Continuous with the design philosophy of the Schindler House, the viewers engage with each other in small groups in unprescribed floor-bound activities reminiscent of both the camping trips that inspired Schindler and his wife Pauline and the activities that occurred in The House of Dust during its CalArts era: hanging out, laying down, talking, making out or just being high on the floor. In this way, it will operate as an apparatus for revealing the visitors’ roles as both viewers and performers. The piece reflects a conception of education that is social and embodied. Studying, an activity important to both Schindler’s architecture (each room is a studio) and Alison Knowles’ House of Dust (a house for students and everyone to share artistic experiments), is thought of as a multimodal practice that includes mimetics, listening through the body and the lexicon of body language. To further interrogate the question of embodiment and knowledge, Slow Reading Club will lead a group performance during which multiple bodies will perform a curated selection of texts.
Performance: Speaking In Tongues, 2019
For Speaking in Tongues Jasmin Blasco recites a text over music. Continuing his exploration into how communication is mediated by contemporary technologies, the piece will provoke an encounter between embodied and disembodied voices.