Please refer back to the previous entry for a summary of the project thus far. The following daily entries were written during our first deconstruction weekend at the site.

11.01.01

It seems appropriate that our work at the site begins on the first day of the new year. We start in the dark cavity of the attic, plugging holes around the perimeter with loose bits of insulation to block the last remnants of daylight from leaking in. Attempts at making an aperture to create a camera obscura are unsuccessful, as the hollow metal tubes of the massive antenna on the roof are too thin to be captured. Instead, we carry out a series of lighting tests on pieces of wallpaper from the bedroom below, exploring the potential for light to project images through a surface. Whenever we turn on our headlamps, hundreds of frost-covered nailheads are briefly illuminated.

Bachelard describes the attic as a space for dreaming, but after working in the pitch black it becomes more psychologically draining than stimulating. With our sense of sight absent, focus shifts to the cold seeping into our hands and feet. Aside from a few brief exchanges about how freezing it is and the occasional click of the camera remote, it is quiet. The silence inside opens up the vastness of the prairies beyond, of vehicles moving somewhere in the distance and the unpredictable creaking of the house on its foundation.

The volume of the attic is at once too large and too small – too high at its apex to touch the ceiling with an outstretched hand and too low at its corners to fit one’s body. In a project that is as much about occupation as it is about deconstruction, it’s hard to know where to situate oneself.


A section of the attic structure is projected onto a sheet of paper, then outlined in tape and spray-painted. Taking photographs in the dark, we wash the image with a small headlamp to achieve the final effect.

11.01.02

In the morning, the sky has the sort of intense blue that tells you how cold it is even before you step outdoors. During the ten-minute drive to the site from my parents’ farm, we watch as a mirage lifts the flat road up to an unnatural height, revealing the headlights of vehicles that are still miles away.

After another hour in the dark attic and our ideas exhausted, we decide to finally begin the deconstruction process. With a sledgehammer and two crowbars we remove the first board. Daylight pours in. Instantly, the space becomes grounded. Materials have scale and a tangible thickness; the horizon is visible in the distance. Aside from the brief climb I made to the top of my dad’s massive grain bin when I was younger, this is the highest vantage point I’ve ever experienced in this landscape.

We spend a few minutes experimenting with some long exposure images in the bright light. In the following photograph, a salvaged board is transformed into a wall of light over a 20 second interval.



11.01.03

Work on the roof continues, more methodically today than yesterday. Our rhythm is disrupted when we decide to bring down the antenna, which proves to be more challenging than expected. The following layered image reveals the antenna's ghost as it falls to the ground below.



Although we’re hoping to salvage as much raw lumber as we can, most of the roof boards are too old and rotten to use. We drag those that are still in one piece into the nearby garage. The rest will be cleared of their shingles and broken up to use as firewood for the furnace in the basement. In this way, the house becomes fuel for its own deconstruction.

We’ve started in the attic with the hope that once the roof is stripped of its boards, it will be possible to project the remaining structure down into the rooms below with the introduction of multiple apertures in the ceiling. Using a photographic technique we developed last semester, these projections are taped out and painted onto the walls and floors before being washed with light, bringing movement and three-dimensionality to a flat surface. With the structure of the house reflecting further and further inward on itself, the dwelling becomes an active witness to its own death, one that we are able to foreshadow through simultaneous acts of occupation and representation.