M A D A M E A R K I T E K T

More: CNN coverage on the Rachel Dolezal story

The course of Piper's art since the late 1960s can be understood as consisting of an ongoing interplay between conceptual and feminist practices. As a conceptual artist, Piper has stressed the power of rational argument and the clarity of logical proofs.  Her rigorous analyses of self-identity suggest links to the exhaustive descriptive procedures of artists such as Sol LeWitt and Hans Haacke. Feminism enters into Piper's work not so much because it concerns women specifically, but because, like the work of artists such as Victor Burgin and Mary Kelly, it consistently challenges the philosophical underpinnings of our phallocentric language and society. Piper's analyses of subjectivity are invariably self-questioning, informed by an essential understanding of the mutability of her own identity.  As in Cornered, Piper's art leaves us less certain of who we are, but more engaged in determining who we might be.

Alyson Shotz’s Mirror Fence (2003) embraces its changing surroundings, although its reflective pickets, which extend in a straight line, enclose nothing. As Shotz has described her practice, “I’m interested in making objects that change infinitely, depending on their surroundings. The light at different times of day, the weather…what the viewers are wearing, all these are just some of the variables that will make the piece different every time one comes in contact with it. For me an ideal work of art is one that is ultimately unknowable in some way.”

Pic: FITCHBURG SENTINEL, Massachusetts, July 24, 1967 "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit", by historian and Detroit native Thomas J. Sugrue - examines the role race, housing, job discrimination, and capital flight played in the decline of Detroit. Sugrue argues that the decline of Detroit began long before the 1967 race riot. Sugrue argues that institutionalized and often legalized racism resulted in sharply limited opportunities for Detroit blacks for most of the 20th century. He also argues that the process of  de-industrialization, the flight of investment and jobs from the city, began in the 1950s as employers moved to suburban areas and small towns and also introduced new labor saving technologies

“When the white residents of 8 mile road in Detroit were told they lived to close to a black neighbourhood to qualify for positve FHA-rating they built a 6 foot wall between themselvs and their black neighbours - once the wall went up, mortages was appoved. Between 1934 - and 1962 the federal government underwrote 120 billion in new housing. Less than 2% went to non-whites.”

Re-framing - "How do we see, what we see?" 

Bodies orients pace. According to Sara Ahmed - Space takes shape by the bodies that inhabit them. Ahmed stresses; "It is important to note that not only bodies are oriented. Space also takes shape by orienting itself based on certain bodies more than others."

The Colony - La Nouvelle Orleans (New Orleans 1728)French diagram of New Orleans grid (1763), centered at Place d'Armes (Jackson Square) along the Fleuve St. Louis (Mississippi River).

Passing bodies trough space and time. Absorption into the invisibility of the norm.