Seat Assignment
Photographs, digital images, video and sound (2010 and ongoing)

Improvising with materials close at hand, Seat Assignment consists of photographs, video, and digital images all made while in flight using only a camera phone. The project began spontaneously on a flight in March 2010 and is ongoing. At present, over 2500 photographs and video, made on more than 40 different flights, constitute the raw material of the project.

Seat Assignment was exhibited for the first time in February 2011 at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, a museum in the city of Dunedin on South Island in New Zealand. Since I had 22 hours of flight time from New York to get to the Dunedin I proposed to make the bulk of the work for the exhibition on the way there. In the exhibition, two of the three galleries focused on work made entirely en route. A third room contained works that functioned as a retrospective look on the first year of the project.

Installation shots from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery exhibition

Catalog essay co-written by Nina Katchadourian and Aaron Kriesler, chief curator at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, about the concepts and methodology behind the project.

As Seat Assignment progresses, thematic categories have started to emerge. You can browse a small selection of them here.

Landscapes

High-Altitude Spirit Photography

Disaster Scenes and Provisional Shelters

Rapture

Birds of New Zealand

Discovering New Zealand

Sleepers

Buckleheads

Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style




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