Remix Final Project

Pockets Full of Ashtray Burdens was inspired by the novel Blood, Guts, and High School by Kathy Acker. Through a literary collage method Acker tells the story of Janey a girl who had an incestuous relationship with her father, joined a gang, and ends up living as a Persian sex slave. Her cut and paste method provides a ‘plagiaristic’ context that allows the readers to access her semi-pseudo autobiography through the story of others. Through this installation I have begun to tell bits and pieces of my own story. The architectural form is a taken from several sources, one being the backyard Jaycee Lee Dungard was held captive in from the age of 11 to 29. While the camper shell top you see in the installation references a scene from a pornographic film featuring a redneck family. The textures of the wood and junk items you see lying around reference structures and dilapidated buildings I have observed on a recent ‘dirty town tour’ I took over spring break through the state of Wyoming. The pink lights you see creeping in encapsulate the idea of escapism. Where her mind and imagination might have went in order to cope through the situation she was stuck in.

During my research I came across a mock interview by the radio talk show host Phil Hendrie that I have remixed into an audio piece. Hendrie takes on the role of a former child molester discussing a picnic in Idaho where recently released sex offenders gather once a year. The beat that plays throughout the piece gives a sense of the continual motion of the machine similar to the repetitive motion of the crime. The other sounds have come from a variety of sources taken from the Internet, this include a squeaking door, creatures from the sea, and children’s voices