Ekklesiastes

Ekklesiastes is a sculptural performance project where I reduce common folding metal chairs, typical of church basements, gymnasiums, community centers, and outdoor barbecues, to flatness with a hand sledge while reciting the books of the Protestant Old & New Testament Bible with each blow.

Ekklesiastes is the Greek spelling for the name of 21st book of the old testament and means “one who addresses the assemble.” This existentialist work walks around the narratives of Biblical knowledge and memory and tries to express its own meaning in present terms. The taxonomy of the books of the Bible act as a stand-in for all inherited views of the world. In exorcising these names through my own body and discharging the energy of those that memory through the hammer and into the chair I am reestablishing my relationship to my own psychology and altering my consciousness.

Ekklesiastes is a contribution to my focus on how power, energy, and pressure effect various types of bodies; political, social, biologically, etc.