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Oreen Cohen
Interdisciplinary Artist
GROUND BREAK/DAYBREAK, 2012
5,000 hand-bent steel roses, wax, wood lathe, auto glass.
Collaborator Tim Reid,Sound Engineer
Exhibition: “Any Where But Here” Whitdel Arts Gallery, Detroit, MI
Day/Break:Ground/Break is an interactive sculpture. As the 5,000 hand-bent steel roses are walked on, they shuffle and clank together emanating a tin like sound with each footstep. The roses seem like they would not be sturdy as they are made of thin 22 gauge steel, however, collectively packed together they hold their strength.
Viewers cautiously walk on the roses as they shuffle and clank together emanating a tin-like sound with each footstep. These sounds will be picked up by contact and condenser mics that are hidden underneath the platform and transmitted to the other side of the dividing wall, where in the next space, globes of broken auto glass glow, emanating cracks along the concrete floors and ceiling. Speakers are hidden inside this ceiling with a Rumpshaker subwoofer, where the sound from the roses is collected and builds up over itself into a crescendo of visitors footsteps.
Through personally enduring the labor of cutting and hand bending the steel roses, this piece speaks to a poem, ‘Bread and Roses’ by James Oppenheim, which was used as a slogan during the textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1912. The prevalent physicality in the work refers to and honors the industrial labor unionizing efforts, reminding us that we are not autonomous from processes of production (even if currently waning) that shaped and still affect our present culture and its relative affluence.