REVERSE HOUSE KIT is a non-linear, spatial interpretation of a 15-part poem by the same name. Peering into a large room through windows that create long, tunnel-like portals through a multi-layered space, a fugue of live voices guides us through the poem, informing us that we have arrived at the cusp of critical and imminent change. All pre-conceived notions must give way to re-invention---new models, softer structures. The space beyond the observation windows is shaped by floating windows, doors and layered thin plastic--thrown into relief by video projections and lighting. A sense of the actual space of the room falls away and one is drawn into the illusion of a very vast projected space. The audio environment is a continuously shifting landscape, using techniques of real-time spatialization, sampling, and processing of text and instrumental sound. The architecture of this piece could be referred to as a reverse panopticon. No one in the room has a privileged, all-seeing vantage point. It is about multiple vantage points that are always on the move and must be sought out. This piece is an intriguing marriage between form and content and how this applies to a performative experience. It can exist as an installation with video loops that can be experienced in smaller groups over time and as a large scale multi-media performance. The video merges the performances and the footage that was projected, presenting an intriguing recombinant space of the actual installation and the space depicted in the footage.

“Thus, an immense cosmic house is a potential of every dream of houses. Winds radiate from its center and gulls fly from its windows. A house that is as dynamic as this allows the poet to inhabit the universe. Or, to put it differently, the universe comes to inhabit his house.”
[Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p.51]

Director:   Carole Kim  (their other films) and Jesse Gilbert  (their other films)
Producer:	Genre:  Experimental
Country:  USA	Copyright Year:  2003
Original Format:  DV	Color Type:  Color
Sound Type:  Magnetic Stereo	Length:  00:12:48
Original Language:  English	Subtitle Language:
Label:   Aspect Magazine
Other Info: Audio Commentary by Julie Lazar: Julie Lazar is Director of International Contemporary Arts Network in Glendale, California, and an independent curator. She was a founding curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles where she later served as Director of Experimental Programs until 2000. Among the range of artists with whom she has worked are: John Adams, John Cage, Remy Charlip, Mel Chin, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Renée Green, Weba Garretson, Karen Finley, Janie Geiser, Frank O. Gehry, Gary Hill, Hirokazu Kosaka, George Legrady, Sherrie Levine, Rick Lowe, Pat O’Neill, Martin Puryear, Navin Rawanchaikul, Peter Sellers, Marie Sester, Elizabeth Streb, Doho Suh, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Bill Viola and Grahame Weinbren. In New York, she held key administrative positions at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center; The Hudson River Museum, Rockefeller University, The Museum of Modern Art, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She attended Oakland and Columbia Universities.

This film has never been screened

Microcinema Interview/Article:

Compilations containing this film
	Commercial DVD Aspect - The Chronicle of New Media, Volume II (MC-192) Artists of the West Coast	2002	Available from the Microcinema DVD Store