(2014) Dimensions variable. Hand blown soda-lime and borosilicate glass, etched found sheet glass, collected bound and photocopied texts making up “fever library,” candles, nichrome wire, variac, mild steel, plywood, electronic components, dry gin, wintergreen oil, shadows, heat.
Informed by a studio practice that requires practitioners to subject their bodies to extreme heat, this work draws from literature, performance and the process of glassmaking to explore substantial elevation of temperature in the human body and the resulting dissociative states, delusions and revelations that occur as the body’s heat rises.
In a thermochemical distillation process occurring over the duration of the exhibition, printed words were dissolved off the pages of books of poetry and prose alluding to fever-induced states and were processed into essential oil. This oil was used to fill a fluid filled lens integrated in a heated viewing device to observe inverted schematic drawings illustrating the feverish states described in the collected texts.
The work changed subtly over the course of the exhibition. A small library of fever-related texts grew and diminished as the books were read and processed, and the still was fired weekly. A hollow convex magnifying lens was slowly filled with the accumulated liquid from the distillation process.
