HAUNTED HOUSE (Artists' Edition)
8.5" x 11" unbound edition of 47 inter-weaved prints
2010 -- Alt-Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt am Main
A book of editions, a series of prints, intended to be rasterized into one massive image, with an accompanying guide for its construction. This book accompanied Gallows' contributor et al.'s installation of the Haunted House itself in Frankfurt.
"On three nights, from the 28th to the 30th of October the artist group et al.* presented the Haunted House in Frankfurt am Main. There were a little over 60 artists and crew involved. The range of skill went from lighting design to costume design to make-up and carpentry. Eighteen artists performing in 20 rooms that guests to the house walked through. Additionally each night there were invited performers: Vaginal Davis (Berlin), Jean-Louis Costes(Paris), Bradley Eros(New York) who performed on a constructed stage in the "chapel" of the house. They would mark the opening of the evening and were themed accordingly.
While returning in 1929 from South America to Europe, Le Corbusier met Josephine Baker on board the ocean liner Lutétia. Baker was famous around the world for her dance in which she was dressed in nothing but 16 bananas. Le Corbusier made several sketches of Josephine during this time and an erotic color drawing.
It was the contention of the Haunted House that Josephine Baker haunts the European cultural ego. Working from the notion of specificity of high art and the role of the architect in the city, as quoted by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant in Foundations of Modern Art: THERE IS A HIERARCHY IN THE ARTS: DECORATIVE ART AT THE BOTTOM, AND THE HUMAN FORM AT THE TOP. BECAUSE WE ARE MEN.
FUCK THAT said the spooks."