Google Map[ ] Projects is a collaborative group consisting of four artists: Rachel Jones, JeffRinehart, Natalie Sciortino and Fernando Braxton. "The Home Repo Project" is the groups' first effort as a collective. [ ] Projects joins with ArtInAction in their efforts to cultivate relationships between the creative class of New Orleans, traumatized landscapes, and our community as a whole. [ ] Projects aim to address issues of safety and domesticity with their work at this site.
"The Home Repo Project" occupies an overgrown lot in the blighted Lake Vista community. Working on site for several weeks we began to feel intimately connected to the neighborhood. We grew accustomed to its rhythms and began to feel as if we were contributing to the surrounding reconstruction efforts. Parallel to this experience of being part of a community we very often found ourselves alone in the landscape. This acted as a sobering reminder of how far this specific neighborhood has to go in its efforts of recovery and how isolated one can feel living in a post-K environment.
In response to this experience of connectivity we set out to build something that would act as a symbol of life and, in our own way, ‘rebuilding’. The simple gestures of our work became an important ritual given the context of this particular space.
"The Home Repo Project" is an interactive installation. The work cannot be fully experienced without the viewer navigating throughout the piece, stepping over yarn, considering where and how to move next. In doing so the participant is judging space, making active decisions, and internalizing the amount of time and effort these actions will take. What seems like a simple act of walking across the polished slab becomes complex and delicate. Many participants of "The Home Repo Project" speak of parallels in their own everyday post-K lives: moments of frustration or confusion mixed with small flashes of relief followed by a sense of accomplishment.”
Many thanks to David Sullivan and his family for allowing the use of their property and for their wholehearted support of our efforts.
