AbstractsLanguage, Literature & Linguistics

Hot House highlights the current evolution of The ManShed, an ongoing solo project that takes the form of a multi-screen video installation and accompanying film set. Beginning in summer 2013, The ManShed refers to an enclosed, two-roomed meeting place built from conjoined panels that plays host to a series of sexual encounters between myself and other men. Under its roof, an infrastructure of hidden cameras documents these interactions between my body, a stranger’s, and material forms that interest me. The participating men were solicited through online services used to locate partners for casual sex, like Craigslist and Adam4Adam, as well as through my involvement with the San Diego Fetish Men and the San Diego Gay Pride event. In its first iteration, the resulting video and sculptural elements are organized in a minimal, highly staged environment set in adjacent galleries in the University of California, San Diego’s Visual Art Department. Presented in flux, this work represents an ongoing investigation of alter kinships that spring up within gay male communities and the unexpected conditions in which they flourish. Modeled artificially in my project, The ManShed acts as a metaphorical ‘hot house’ of queer experimentation, breeding a “rare species” of feeling, exchange, and desire, rooted in the sculptural environment. Outside the conceptual formations of project, this exhibition unifies my sculptural and performance-based production under the umbrella of a single work and represents my current direction toward constructed, theatrical environments combined with video display.