Starter Home was a site specific multi-media installation conceived by artist Christine Altman.
Starter Home was located in an old home near the center of Torrington, in Northwest Connecticut. The audience experienced this installation while walking through a real estate tour of the property. During the tour, audiences witnessed video projected onto the material objects of the home: a chopping block; shower curtain; and toilet. Local real estate professionals performed as themselves in the tour, and the audience toured the house amidst the artwork installations.
Starter Home was an experiential exhibition of sculpture and multi-dimensional artwork that investigated the environmental psychology of suburban domestic spaces and its collision with the social and gendered pressures of popular culture. The physical objects of the space created a narrative that the audience was confronted by. Video and sound elements installed throughout the house were used to reframe gender and power relations referencing a typical domestic space.
Starter Home invites the viewer to consider how a typical home and the domestic relationships performed within its context are social tools that influence acceptable gender behavior patterns and values to expose how current representational systems such as television, film and advertising, produce and promote the social mythologies that are performed daily on this personal stage.
Starter Home is a celebration of our ability to re-conceive ourselves. It is a pointed look at social conventions as mediated by architectural spatial dynamics over time. The viewer is challenged to make comparisons between cultural ideology, economic reality, family relationships and the meaning of home.
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