Coincidence Control
Brattleboro Museum, 2019
Coincidence Control transformed the former ticket office in Brattleboro’s Union Station into a place for reconnecting with our intuitive and embodied cycles of time. I leveraged the space’s history as best I could, and used a variety of modes to help visitors escape and “come home”: dense and surprising books, a private meditation capsule, video and sound sequences, and maps to guide voyages to inner landscapes. Visitors were invited to think of themselves as “Conductors” of the space and offered guidelines and invitations for conduct, further emphasized by the use of the original, hand-lettered door from the former conductors lounge. And rather than exert temporal control with an hourly ringing of a clock or timetable, a bell hung in the middle of the space, available for whatever o’clock a Conductor deemed ring-able.
In addition to the physical installation, Coincidence Control was host to a series of events that all heightened sensitivites to different aspects of time. These included SoundMind, a communal sound-making workshop led by Adam Tinkle, an architectural history tour, and two dream journal workshops. It is always my hope that by actively investigating the methodologies of temporal control, we can better understand how our human clocks diverge from mechanical rhythms, and by offering spaces for exploring stillness and sensitivity, perhaps we can enhance awareness of our own unique patterns.
Coincidence Control was a platform from which to lose yourself—to “spend” time and thereby reclaim it.
Featured in Art New England, June/July 2019 issue
