"The Happiness of Objects" is the title of a new exhibit at the Sculpture Center in Queens, New York. The title is inspired from a book by W.J.T Mitchell entitled, "What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images." In it the author notes that "modern, rational, secular" people don't generally treat pictures like persons, yet "we always seem to be willing to make exceptions for special cases." The curator of the Sculpture Center took that concept and created an exhibition, where visitors, upon entering, receive "The Object's Bill of Rights" from which below, I've selected a few of those rights to share:
The Object has the right to many lovers The Object has the right to fuse with other objects The Object has the right to acknowledge its history of production The Object has the right to be out of order The Object has the right to define the terms of its exchange with other objects The Object has the right to be gendered, non-gendered or hybrid The Object has the right to create its own language The Object has the right to a new identity The Object has the right to free speech Sign or design? That is the question of the object.
One particular work is a two-foot-wide, four-story transparent structure titled Flatland (2007) constructed by Ward Shelley (image below!). For twenty days, he and five artists live in a "two-dimensional space." Apparently, Flatland is streamed live online, accessible twenty-four hours a day at www.flatlandproject.com.
More about the exhibit: http://www.sculpture-center.org/pe_hoo_des1.html
More of the Object's Bill of Rights: http://www.sculpture-center.org/pe_hoo_des1.html
A blog of the Flatlanders: http://flatlandproject.blogspot.com/
Plath's well-known poem, "Daddy," was published two years after her death in 1965. Text of the poem:
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off the beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene
An engine, an engine, Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through.
If I've killed one man, I've killed two—- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
