Memory House/Desire House: Translations + Exchanges

“Memory House/Desire House,” is an installation/performance that resulted from two specially designed courses. The work was commissioned by the University’s Performing Arts Center as a complement to the inaugural performance of “A Chinese Home” by the Kronos Quartet. The goal was to create a “public engagement” project that would draw out themes from “A Chinese Home” and involve the audience as well as students and faculty from multiple disciplines in reflection. Ultimately, the project provided a vehicle for participants to explore themes of home, place and being through interrelated aspects of exhibition design, architectural structure, ritual and performance.The Desire House Installation drew its inspiration from two main sources: the beauty and flexibility of bamboo as well as the organization, structure, and elements of the Yin Yu Tang House (Hall of Plentiful Shelter), the traditional courtyard house that also inspired “A Chinese Home” and had been dismantled and moved to the US where it is exhibited. The delineation of space with line found in the bare Chinese Desire Houses, Asian bamboo scaffolding and temporary bamboo Opera houses found in China is reiterated in this bamboo structure. The installation structure reinterprets, the Yin Yu Tang House’s post and beam structure, revealed during its deconstruction. Students constructed the large bamboo installation guided by the architecture faculty member who conceived of the project.At a time when the foreclosure crisis was peaking in the US and many Haitians had lost their homes due to the recent earthquake, student participants from the fields of both dance and architecture explored the value and meanings of home across cultures. Historic Chinese ‘Desire Homes,’ which are ritually burned to honor and thank one’s ancestors for one’s own good fortune were reinterpreted by the students who created their own personal “Desire Houses” appropriate for the current situation. These contemporary “Desire Houses” were installed in the larger installation sited at the Performing Arts Center. The work culminated in an exhibition and a site-specific dance choreographed by the Dance Professor and inspired by the installation and project themes. This dance included a public procession and ritual burning of one “Desire House.” It was performed at the Clarice Smith Center as a prequel to Kronos’ performance of “A Chinese Home.” This work explored the potential of design/build projects in several ways: 1) The project created a meaningful collaboration that brought together internationally renowned musicians, and students and faculty from multiple disciplines; 2) Participants were engaged as both novices and experts, required to stretch both within and beyond their own disciplines. For example, the students constructed a very large structure out of an unfamiliar material that they harvested themselves and they also performed. For one group the former was more comfortable for the other the latter, for both they were experiences that extended their reach; 3) The project created an opportunity for public reflection around the meaning of home across cultures and created a shared experience to mark the loss of home that many people were experiencing at that time.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7