Temple Crocker, Tell Me Window, October 2004
The installation consisted of antiquated keys attached to the ceiling by threads, door knob back plates that contained fragments of language, hair, photographs and string, a small curiosity cabinet, hundreds of matches and a collection of freshly fallen leaves. Participants were encouraged to use the scissors that hung in the space to cut down a key and take it with them. A sound score created in collaboration with Carol Anne Perini accompanied the installation.
Tell Me Window began as an exploration of the metaphor of the body as a holding house, a complex and mysterious dwelling place that contains not only our expanding lungs and beating hearts, but the nuances of our dream life and the remembrances of our past. I am fascinated with the unpredictable nature of memory and its constant state of flux. There is a subtle terror accompanying the discovery that a person, place or feeling from the past has faded so dramatically that it lacks any definition in the mind’s eye. Why does one image become soft around the edges to a point of indecipherability and another shine with fragmented clarity? And do we have any influence on what comes and what goes?
In ancient Chinese medicine autumn is associated with grieving and the sound of weeping. The element of the season is metal mined from the earth and melted by fire. The parts of the body associated are the lungs, skin and hair. While creating work in a room with a window that offers a view of the changing season I witness the leaves of the trees brighten to an excess of color before falling and inevitably fading. With this observation comes the insight that the experiences of my past have their own autumnal season and live in my memory as a part of that same cycle of change.
Temple Crocker was born in Georgia, grew up in North Carolina and after earning her BA from the College of Charleston in South Carolina moved to San Francisco, where she lived for eleven years. During this time she performed, designed and created theatre with a variety of directors, writers, choreographers and musicians. Some of those artists include Loy Arcenas, Sean Hayes, Mark Jackson, Philip Gotanda, Tom Ontiveros, Pearl Ubungen, Sommer Ulrickson and Will Waghorn. It was in San Francisco that she met her long-time friend and collaborator Annie Kunjappy. Together they founded Strangefruit Theatre Ensemble with Rowena Richie and from 1996 to 2003 created six original performances, including Heat Death of the Universe based on the short story by Pamela Zoline, and Sewing Lessons based on the art and lives of surrealist painters/writers Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. Both projects were supported by the Zellerbach Family Fund, and Sewing Lessons was honored with a Bay Area Critics Circle award nomination in 2001 for best direction and costume
Tell Me Window began as an exploration of the metaphor of the body as a holding house, a complex and mysterious dwelling place that contains not only our expanding lungs and beating hearts, but the nuances of our dream life and the remembrances of our past. I am fascinated with the unpredictable nature of memory and its constant state of flux. There is a subtle terror accompanying the discovery that a person, place or feeling from the past has faded so dramatically that it lacks any definition in the mind’s eye. Why does one image become soft around the edges to a point of indecipherability and another shine with fragmented clarity? And do we have any influence on what comes and what goes?
In ancient Chinese medicine autumn is associated with grieving and the sound of weeping. The element of the season is metal mined from the earth and melted by fire. The parts of the body associated are the lungs, skin and hair. While creating work in a room with a window that offers a view of the changing season I witness the leaves of the trees brighten to an excess of color before falling and inevitably fading. With this observation comes the insight that the experiences of my past have their own autumnal season and live in my memory as a part of that same cycle of change.
Temple Crocker was born in Georgia, grew up in North Carolina and after earning her BA from the College of Charleston in South Carolina moved to San Francisco, where she lived for eleven years. During this time she performed, designed and created theatre with a variety of directors, writers, choreographers and musicians. Some of those artists include Loy Arcenas, Sean Hayes, Mark Jackson, Philip Gotanda, Tom Ontiveros, Pearl Ubungen, Sommer Ulrickson and Will Waghorn. It was in San Francisco that she met her long-time friend and collaborator Annie Kunjappy. Together they founded Strangefruit Theatre Ensemble with Rowena Richie and from 1996 to 2003 created six original performances, including Heat Death of the Universe based on the short story by Pamela Zoline, and Sewing Lessons based on the art and lives of surrealist painters/writers Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. Both projects were supported by the Zellerbach Family Fund, and Sewing Lessons was honored with a Bay Area Critics Circle award nomination in 2001 for best direction and costume
