The site was kept unknown to us until we were taken there on the first of the 21 days we were to inhabit the space. We were even driven there wearing blackout glasses so that we didn’t know where we were.
Additionally, at that point, Henry and I had never met, although we are both based in Atlanta (I am from London, but have been living in the US and practicing in Atlanta for a number of years now). At the point of original contact, a site had not been arranged. Are you both based in Atlanta? Did you stake out the site or was it assigned to you through Dashboard Co-op?īen Coleman: Dashboard Co-op contacted Henry and I to propose the project. The resulting work existed as a universe entirely of its own.Īlicia Eler: Tell me about the origins of this site-specific work. In any strong creative convergence, two minds most become one - if only for a short period of time. Both of the artists brought with them to the space Alfred Jarry books, something that they only discovered when the texts were laid out on a table. Invested in creating an experimental environment that blurred the lines of truth and fiction, fantasy and reality, and the two artists’ solo practices, Detweiler and Coleman’s installation became an explosion of aesthetic influences ranging from modernism and Dada to performance, pataphysics, Gutai and sci-fi special effects.
