444

2010

Mixed media, video and audio, approx. 8 x 8’

In November 2010 I stayed at the Maine Motel in Portland and wrote an account of my stay while there. 444 is a look at motels and their ambiguous place in American culture as represented in movies and in writing. I began with this idea and chose a motel to stay at to take an account of my experience while in that space. Thomas Moore reflects on this as temenos and says, “…I notice that hotel life is keenly sensitive to temenos. …I establish the temenos by checking the perimeters carefully, discovering where the weak places are, where sound penetrates, how secure the sliding doors are. This check is not just for security but for the sensation that the space is now prepared for my habitation” (Moore 295). My account of the Maine Motel lead to the formation of a constructed facade of a motel room exterior entrance. This facade was not representational of any particular motel but a distillation of any that you would encounter on the side of the highway. Audio of the above account layered with other noises that one might hear in a room is heard when approaching the door to peer through the peep hole that shows a motel room in monochrome.