Project 181 blog

visit: project-181.blogspot.com for information about this ongoing project

New Project On The Horizon

Furniture to Firewood

In times of crisis, natural disaster or financial collapse people have engaged the resources around them to insure their survival, including burning their furniture to keep warm. As a result of the current financial situation I have developed a search route to survey the streets of the 30315 zip code area, where my home is located, to find piles of discarded furniture “trashed out” in the foreclosure process. Once located, the burnable wood is removed, cut into lengths and stored, awaiting use in time of deepest crisis.

The stacked wood stands in as physical and metaphorical manifestation of the mortgage based financial crisis that has swept the U.S. and subsequently financial markets worldwide. The paint, varnish and glues that remain on the wood render it toxic if burned in a closed area, this toxicity mirrors that of the securities that have affected the worlds financial markets over recent months and years. The stack of wood references the 300 plus properties in 30315 zip code area that at the time of this writing are currently bank owned and awaiting sale as a direct result of foreclosure.

Still Water at Dalton Gallery Agnes Scott College 2009

Webster's dictionary defines the word Potential as: having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in to the future. And the dictionary defines the word Inevitabilities as: something that is certain to happen, unavoidable. The works in Steve Jarvis’ Potential Inevitabilities series literally hold and hide our most valuable commodity: water.

The giant plastic rock, made to resemble a real rock, can be used outside to conceal and hide objects. In Jarvis’ work it is meant to camouflage a pump and storage system that gives access to an underground water tank.

Phonebooks are found in almost every home but no one ever uses them. They can be placed and left almost anywhere and can be very easily overlooked. They look like trash—but are they trash? It might be a stack of phone books, or it might be a hiding place to disguise gallons of water.

A video documents Jarvis’ adventure of “stealing” water from Canada to fill two six-gallon containers, in addition to a video showing water freely flowing down a stream.

Also on exhibit are two couches in the Fireplace Lounge in the Alston Student Center. Appearing to be regular vinyl couches, they actually hold and hide 52 gallons of water in tanks that has been stolen from an unnamed source that provides water for Georgia, Alabama and Florida. All of these works focus on camouflaging water in and around the home—but one cannot help but notice that the items Jarvis chooses are large and obvious.

By bringing water across international boundaries—in this case from Canada—Jarvis points out that the future water deficit may be a global problem, one that will lead to inevitable conflicts. Global power will not depend on domestic GDP’s or imports and exports, but may depend on the nation that hoards and contains the most water. The life-sustaining commodity that is water cannot be manufactured, and there is nothing that equals its value. Jarvis values owning water-- the more you have, the richer you are. His subversive methodology—both in the form of his objects and in his technique for acquiring the water—highlight the feeling that water is more valuable than money or gold.

Jarvis’ work evokes questions like: What will happen if we run out of water? How will we cope? What will we need to survive?

—Text by Nancy Pham ‘10, ed. LA

Potential Inevitability Systems 1 (Provisioning)

Gallery Stokes Exhibition, Atlanta, GA Winter 2008

http://www.gallerystokes.com/106SteveJarvis/Jarvisarchive.html

Potential Inevitability Post 1

This blog will be used to post ideas, images and instructions related to Potentially Inevitable situations that we all may be forced to deal with in our lifetimes.