Pseudomorphose, a word from geology that refers to rock formations that look like one kind of rock at the surface, but have transformed into another kind of rock internally over time, was a month-long investigation of the nature of change, undertaken as an artist-in-residence at experimental art space 10b Projects in Jamaica Plain, MA. The project was inspired by an upstairs neighbor I had when I was younger who was Haitian, and cleaned the stairs of our shared triple decker with a very strong smelling ritual wash every day, twice a day. She was changing the space in an invisible way.
Inspired by the memory of her labor, I spent the month of April 2023 trying to alter the space of 10b Projects in invisible ways, with the goal of making the site into a powerful engine for social change in Boston, drawing on the past, future and present of the location, and engaging visitors to the space to help with this. I undertook a 12-page list of performative and transformational actions in the space, some alone, some with visitors, and then allowed visitors to contribute their own ideas for actions as well. The actions included things like covering the walls in wheatpasted spells for change written by visitors to the space and then patching, sanding and painting the walls repeatedly until they were clean and white again; embroidering in white onto the space’s white curtains; sleeping overnight in the gallery while a group of co-dreamers around the city tried to hold the same dream-intentions for one night using the techniques of Pauline Oliveros’ partner IONE; changing the smell of the space in different ways; hosting a group singing experience during an eclipse; gold-leafing deeply hidden parts of the space; hosting a day of co-working on things people wanted to change in invisible ways; calling neighborhood birds to temporarily claim the half-indoor/half-outdoor space with bird calls and birdseed; people giving tattoos to each other in the space—so many changes occurred that I could barely keep track of it all. But I audio recorded the whole time each time I was there and then played the sound back from the previous visit during the next one, recording that into the next recording, etc. People described the effect of the sound as feeling like time was completely unfolded, and no longer functioning linearly. They never knew if a cough or the scrape of a chair was from today or last week, and then it started feeling like it could be from tomorrow…
Pictured here is a rock that had bright flecks of mica in it, which I overlaid with gold leaf.
The project closed with a procession to Franklin Park to place the rock, with its nearly invisible changes, in a location where it could serve as a memorial to a local artist who lost their life there.
Pseudomorphose aimed to create invisible but palpable sensations of change for all who participated and for the site itself over time, but also to have conversation about performative vs actual or felt change; about how deep changes happen to, within, and around us; and about how invisible the labor of change often is in the final products of that labor.