Swim

A mix of paper and wire with a series of projections of watercolor animations.

And Bring the Noon

Show Description:

Over seventy years ago today, Jack Kerouac misplaced the manuscript to what was the beginning of a large and ambitious project. He was 22 at the time, a young man making sense of his place in the world, yet to develop into the author of On the Road. When The Haunted Life resurfaced in 2002 it appeared as if out of a time machine. It is an artifact of a past that many now would just as soon forget, and others would rather lionize.

In The Haunted Life, the youthful Kerouac is searching for his voice. A voice that could only be from America, heard in America, or resonate in America. At the same time, it is a voice that is not quite American.

The novel is set during the last chapter of a world war. The young male anti-hero seeks to distance himself from European sensibilities, which is altogether enunciated by the francophone author. All the while it is taking place in a burgeoning country beholden to its immigrant roots that unironically used casual bigotry to distance itself from the old world, given voice from an immigrant.

This text is the prompt for our project; a coming of age for the author as he writes about the home that is a source of ambivalence for him. He grounds himself in literature, longs to be cosmopolitan, and sees war as a grand adventure all the while scorning the provincialism of small town life in an era before the pervasive connectivity of the digital age.