Date of Submission

Spring 2015

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Film and Electronic Arts

Project Advisor 1

Peggy Ahwesh

Abstract/Artist's Statement

16’’ on center

by Camila Sobral

In Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard says that the image of a memory is created through the cooperation of the real and unreal. The installation 16’’ on center was made with the intention of getting to the fundamental level of what makes a home, how physical material becomes a method of translation for the immaterial, how a chair is never just a chair. The objects that fill the home, this constructed space, become metaphors for intimacy. What happens when these objects are removed from that space and their meaning becomes irrelevant? We live with them, we grow attached, and they take on incredible sentimental value. For instance, the free furniture I acquired from Craigslist. When interviewing the previous owners, bringing the object that they are trying to get rid back into their home, the object becomes a memory trigger to a time when that thing was very meaningful or necessary to them.

16" on center is a building term that refers to the space between studs in a wall, a standard measurement for building a home. As an installation 16" on center consists of six tall wooden panels made of 2 by 4s that reference the foundation of a house, creating an interiority to shelter my childhood memories, coming of age, and family relations. Within these walls, I have placed furniture, projections of reenactments, and sonic elements that are connected to the

objects in the room. The viewer walks in and around the 'house' entering different scenes that are set up as the remnants related to video projection of that given space. Throughout the lobby there are 6 TV stations, each with headphones, for a viewer to watch interviews with people that I met through the free section on Craigslist whom I got home furniture, carpets, couches, etc. - objects that had been used in their home for years, objects that fell to the background, objects that they had probably never been asked about before. This furniture from Craigslist is then used as a trigger for my own memories.

Over the years I have lived in about six different places I’ve called home. The purpose of reenacting my memories is my way of making them tangible, almost to convince myself of their authenticity. These memories of my sister and I are centered around certain objects, like the American Girl Doll and Kids Cuisine meals. I haven’t interacted with these things since I was younger, and in that space of time, a distortion was created in my relationship to these objects and with the memories themselves.

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