Starting in fall of 2018 and continuing through June 21, 2019, Excavate is in residency at the deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park of Lincoln, Masschusetts. We find ourselves in this space and this role given the connection noticed and presented to the deCordova - an idea inspired by Saul Melman's sculpture 'The Best of all Possible Worlds' - a series of doors without dooknobs. The former Union Glass Company of Somerville, owned and operated by Julian deCordova, was known for all types of glass construction - including glass doorknobs - the piece lacking from these majestic doors at deCordova. From this morsel of an idea came a thought to formally connect the history of the Union Glass Company, Somerville and the history of the deCordova family and the museum. As a Somerville based art collective, Excavate decided to make work around this Somerville connection through a residency based in research that would become performances, presentations and text that spoke to this connection.
The residency found Excavate working through the seasons at deCordova - through the beautiful fall colors through the snows of winter, to a first formal offering telling this story at the Somerville Museum, as part of the exhibition 'Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville,' in March of 2019. The performance was essentially a modern day homecoming celebration for a Union Glass doorknob, gifted to the Somerville Museum by the deCordova Museum. Excavate told the story of the doorknob's life journey from Somerville, to Lincoln, and back to Somerville. The text of the performance told the story of this journey, as Excavate imagined it, and is part of the content developed by Excavate for this residency. Here is the text from the Somerville Museum performance, written in January 2019 and performed in March 2019 as a reflection on the developing story based in research and creative process moving the ideas forward:
Door knob, lavender, purple-ish because of time you spent in a 100 year ago sun. You were made in Somerville, born in Somerville, a molten-y blob of very hot sand in Somerville. I am imagining what your life was like. When Julian deCordova closed the Union Glass Company in Somerville and found he was left with 65,000 dozen doorknobs that no one wanted. Which one were you? Being a doorknob that was never actually a doorknob, never actually touched by thousands of hands moving between rooms, between worlds. Never getting to fulfill your destiny as a portal, as a means of moving through time and space, an engine of change, a small indicator of what’s next, a little blob of potential. You’ve got me thinking about doorknobs, oh little Somerville blob of once molten glass. You’ve got me thinking about modes of transport through time. How do we move ourselves from one moment to the next, how do we define that change, that slight shift. Open the door, turn the light on, pick up your book, close the door, settle in to read. Doorknobs as bookends, as finalizing features. You’ve got me thinking about slamming doors, in anger and frustration.
How I wish you’d still grab me the way you just grabbed that doorknob, like you know you love it, you know with 100 percent certainly you want to hold it. No hesitation. This summer, when the doorknob fell out of your office door, your stuff was trapped inside. You couldn’t work. You couldn’t rest until you figured out how to open that door. You even tried to crawl through the small window above the door, almost breaking your neck. The frustration you felt over not being able to get to your stuff, the door knob laying on the floor on the other side of the shut door, immoveable.
Doorknobs take our anger.
They also let us quietly sneak into bed after a night of laughing with friends, or playing music, or cooking and sharing a huge meal, we can come in and quietly click the door closed behind us and move on to our dreams. Portals.
What was the journey like for this doorknob that never was, traveling 100 years ago from Somerville to Lincoln? To end up in a fountain. Unwanted because who needs a pile of doorknobs? They couldn’t even sell you as a paperweight (they tried!) Mr. deCordova made you into a fountain of doorknobs. A gaudy, strange fountain that was built in sand so he could move the doorknobs around as he pleased. He seemed an odd duck, that guy. What was he like? What I really want to know is, did your other doorknob pals ever tell you anything about his marriage? Did he and Lizzie argue? Did they grab onto other doorknobs as a means of transporting themselves away from one another, seeking refuge and space behind another doorknob? Do doorknobs talk to one another, compare notes?
When the the deCordova’s son died, did they sit by the doorknob fountain and weep? When Lizzie died, did Julian sit by the doorknob fountain and weep?
When they paved over the doorknob fountain, were you sad?
I am thinking about the miles moving beneath my car as I drive you from Lincoln, back to your place of origin, back to Somerville. What was your journey like when they brought you to Lincoln? Did you take route 2? Was there traffic? Was it a bumpy, dirt road?
I can’t stop thinking about your unused potential. You never even got to be what you were born to be before a you were objectified. We call you a doorknob but you are not. You never did get to be that mode of transport, that tool of motion, perpetual motion, constant gesture. What are you now that I’m driving you back to Somerville? What are you now that you’re entering the Somerville museum? What are you now that we are making art about you and making such a big deal about you?
Our next steps will include turning all of our thinking and creating into a culminating piece which will take place on the solstice, June 21, 2019, at deCordova. We intend to turn our texts and anything else we create into a formal text or presentation of some kind, perhaps a children's book, or some other storytelling mode that captures this relationship, with the doorknob as the host and the history as the story the doorknob intends to tell.
Stay tuned for more!
Sincerely,
Excavate Collective
Bess Paupeck
Allie Ross
Sharon Kivenko
May, 2019
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