The Event of a Chair Once Used for Sitting

Description:	Printed in a variable edition of 3.Dimensions of book are approximate. Medium: A4 paper, laser jet ink, black cotton thread.Moira Williams is a transdisciplinary artist focusing on public interactions and exchanges. Recent work has been seen at the Festival of Electronic Arts M.I.T, Rumite in Beweging Netherlands, D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival, Lost Horizon Night Market, Flux Factory, the Philadelphia Marathon, as well as throughout public spaces in New York City. She has guest lectured at the National University of Columbia in Bogotá Columbia, Andres University, Bogotá, Columbia, the TransCultural Exchange Conference in Boston, and at Womens Week in Suffolk County Community College. Moira has also created a residency for herself in the Pioneer Balloon Canada Ltd. factory located in Hamilton Ontario, and is currently working on a mobile living shelter created entirely of indigenous live plants, for her upcoming New York to New York walk. She holds a BFA in Sculpture and Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a Cultural Studies Certificate in Spatial Politics from Stony Brook University, as well as an MFA from Stony Brook University. Moira Williams combines the ephemeral presence of time with material tactility to create the event of a chair once used for sitting.The book is an artefact of a performance, and made from individuals crumpling, twisting or folding the paper to express loss. It is a single gesture repeated differently by many hands. The crumpled pages are then hinged together with cotton thread to convey both a collective, and an individual, sense of activity, movement and fragility. Repeated images of a chair with a soft, sprawling object resting in its arms is on one side of the page, while an empty chair is on the reverse side. The chair image references the chairs specific architecture as a place to rest, a place for listening to someone speaking with us or to us, to interiorise and to go within. Moreover, the chair reminds us that it can be a place for receptivity, individual encounters and social gatherings all of which have animated the chairs rich social history. The chair is an identifiable human element and acts as a portrait, as do the gestures within the crumpled pages. A portrait that is informed by the chairs varied historical significance and defined through its ongoing metaphorical role in society as academic chair, the cathedra, the judicial bench, and the throne. Illustrating how society places an importance on the chairs role. The chairs positioning and style also create a continual dialogue that engages with the social. Placing a chair on a threshold like an entrance into an image or actual steps, the artist expresses multiple connections to social space (the chair in the image was placed on the steps of the Kings County, NY Housing Court, where Moira sat inviting people to crumple the chairs Xeroxed image). Although the event of a chair that was once used for sitting is now an artefact of a performance, it is an error to witness the previously occupied threshold space as passive; doing so is to deny its spatiality, and limit its potential for interrogation. The threshold space becomes transformed by the occupant, as well as by the viewer. These two positions construct interpretations of the space. Both the viewers and the occupants interpretations have vital significance when the threshold space is considered in the context of an ongoing social commentary. The threshold space is not insignificant, and the perception of this space is not an insignificant act. Moiras work, The event of a chair that was once used for sitting enacts the remains of an individual, yet collective, perception and dialogue of a threshold space between the occupant, and the viewer. Each page is meant to remind us of the individuals active relationship to social places, places of exchange, and community. And to consider what it means to loose such places and the people who positively activate them like Iraqs al-Mutanabbi Streets bookselling community.
Origin:	2012
Created By:	Williams, Moira
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/816
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	artists book art bookworks

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