The Waiting Room Auditions | Jordan Wason
Jordan Wason (Brooklyn, NYC) | October 2021
Installation of musical chairs, fabric, rocking horses, exercise bike, lamps, magazines, speakers, organ, piezo pickups, CRT T.V., laser etched signage; Happening series; Video ad series; Digital music recordings
The Waiting Room - 15ft x 12ft installation The Waiting Room Auditions - 9 video ad series, approx. 11min total runtime Musical Chairs - 6.5in x 4.5in laser engraved wood panel Rocking Horse - 6.7 x 4.5 laser engraved wood panel Mirror 1 (Musical Chairs) - _ x _ laser engraved mirror Mirror 2 (Rocking Horse) - _ x _ laser engraved mirror Mirror 3 (Cowboy Kid Chair) - _ x _ laser engraved mirror Mirror 4 (Twin Chairs) - _ x _ laser engraved mirror
Seeing that there was a Bureau of Illumination at Elsewhere, Jordan decided that there must also be a waiting room, as there is always waiting involved in any bureaucratic process. In a waiting room there is typically music, seating, and frustration. In this waiting room there are un-upholstered musical chairs, rolls of fabric, and instruments. The room and the objects themselves are put into a state of waiting for completion. Visitors are provided with the materials to work and create while waiting, in a process that both alleviates their frustration and saves the bureau a lot of money. Throughout the process Jordan wrote typewritten letters to the Bureau next door, which record the evolution of the room and its excavation-
9/11/21
“I propose that we sort these objects in the room next door to the Bureau O.I. so they may in waiting coalesce into a room of musical chairs that will help the public feel they are still in movement during the slow process of self illumination, which can often take a lifetime.”
9/15/21
“The rocking horse on hand should round these chairs up and get them to work… A network of contact mics should be rigged up so that even the shyest chair’s whispers can be heard.”
9/21/21
“It seems that these materials have instead without instruction been going on tangents. The fabric has covered a TV and rocking horse… The chairs remain largely un-upholstered, and while they are noisy they lack rhythm… It is recommended that we audition for conductors of our waiting room… to help the room with its materials in waiting take shape.”
Guests were invited throughout his residency to audition at conducting the waiting room. Not just the music, but every aspect - the seating assignments, the physical fitness, the lighting, their emotions and relationships to one another. Some arrived by appointment, others came in by chance, not knowing what they were waiting for. The Waiting Room Auditions became a range of all possibilities- the best and worst all at once. A chaotic purgatory where the line between what was planned and what played out spontaneously no longer mattered.
Guests are confined in a feedback loop, where the room both limits and frees them. The chairs gain mobility as the visitors lose it. The definition of what qualifies as a chair evolves to include rocking horses, sleds, exercise bikes- each addition providing more mobility than the last. The sounds of the furnishings draw attention to small movements and generate larger ones; the room and the visitors conduct every aspect of each other in an abstract game of musical chairs.
Mirrors from the Bureau were laser engraved with portraits of the chairs, and when stacked they illuminate each other. They are both static and full of movement at the same time- the engraved image at tension with the chaotic shimmering mirrored surface. The Waiting Room remains an instrument available to record with. Please contact Elsewhere for further information on spending time in the room. Selected clips from The Waiting Room Auditions can be viewed here and at JordanWason.com.
