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dismantle [transitive verb]
1: to take to pieces; also : to destroy the integrity or functioning of
2 : to strip of dress or covering : DIVEST3 : to strip of furniture and equipment
Etymology:
1579, from M.Fr. desmanteler "to tear down the walls of a fortress," lit. "strip of a cloak," from des- "off, away" + manteler "to cloak" (see mantle - O.E. mentel = "loose, sleeveless cloak," from L. mantellum "cloak," )
Dismantle is a project that investigates the relationship between intimacy and violation and my own exploration of victimization through the invented personae of a female aggressor. I began the project by making a reversible cape - pink wool (like flesh) on one side and black satin on the inside - I imagined that if I wanted, I could wear the black side on the exterior, allowing me to escape into the night. The cape resembled something between a vampire and a 'fancy French grandma'.
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Inside the cape was a pocket - tucked inside was a sewing kit, complete with scissors, silk thread, a thread ripper, needles, and a camera for documentation: |
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I then invited other people to invite me into their house and into their closet. In the same way that a vampire needs an invitation before entering their victims' house, I was interested in soliciting my victims' complicity. And following the logic of vampires in cheezy B-rated movies, I invented alibis when needed but never revealed my true intentions.
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Inside their closet I cut up part of my own cape and sewed a square of pink and black into a part of their clothes where it would touch them, chafe them, or caress them. This in a sense was a kind of graft, a gift. Further, this self-displacement was a symbolic way to cast a spell on another person but at the cost of dismantling my own self - in other words, possession through dispossession. Throughout the process, I used the concealed video camera to document the approach of each victim up until the point where I stitched in the square. |
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The victims I chose were both people accessible to me - like neighbors - and individuals who themselves were interested in trespassing or sewing. By using their own skills against them I felt as if I was both acknowledging them but also using their own magic against them. I ranked them according to their degree of difficulty as a victim. Those who ranked highest were themselves trespassers or mischief makers and who used clothing or textiles. I discovered that these individuals' were in fact the easiest to enter without offering an alibi, and at times these individuals were at times the most paranoid.
At some point the alibis I had constructed became so elaborate that I had to keep tight administrative records charting all my transactions. |
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The holes in my cape are disruptions, tears, absences - analogous to the way that this personae I've invented exists as an anomaly from my normative life. |
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