Workshop "Reframing The House of Dust" with Janet Sarbanes and Ken Ehrlich and students from the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts)
January 2018 CalArts, Los Angeles
A collaboration between Art by Translation and CalArts faculty and students in the Schools of Critical Studies and Art, "Reframing the House of Dust” undertook a semester-long engagement with legendary Fluxus artist and former CalArts faculty member Alison Knowles’s sculpture The House of Dust, which was installed on the CalArts campus in 1970.
"Reframing the House of Dust” involved the construction of a new structure on the CalArts campus during the winter 2018 session, based on a stanza from the original poem. MA students collaborated on the design and building of the house with Knowles herself, as well as CalArts faculty and students from around the Institute. During spring semester 2018, the newly-built house served as a site for readings, performances and exhibitions, and a focal point for graduate courses on Fluxus, experimental architecture and housing issues. “Reframing the House of Dust” was also the theme of the MA program’s 2018 symposium, which featured an exciting international roster of cultural critics, media theorists, art historians and artists.
During the two-week workshop, students studied the original poem, the 35-page scroll of tractor-feed computer paper that resides in the CalArts archive, and, along with instructors, chose a different quatrain on which to base a new social sculpture:
A HOUSE OF GLASS
ON AN ISLAND
USING ALL AVAILABLE LIGHTING
INHABITED BY VARIOUS COLLECTORS OF ALL TYPES