Prototype 180, 6513 Sharpview Drive, South Facade
Image: 26 x 32 3/4 in. (66 x 83.2 cm)
Framed: 35 1/4 × 41 1/2 in. (89.5 × 105.4 cm)
What do we consider a work of art? American conceptual artist Mary Ellen Carroll describes her practice as investigating this single, fundamental question, through a pursuit that encompasses writing, performance, photography, sculpture, urban planning, and architectural projects.
The long-term project prototype 180, was a massive and complex undertaking, one facet of which is embodied in this diptych. The project centers on the 180-degree rotation of a suburban home in Houston. This simultaneously banal and remarkable engineering feat—which took place in November 2010—is the most visible result of an interlocked set of planning processes and interventions into public policy that Carroll has pursued during a decade of work on this project.
The revolution of this house on its foundation is also a kind of performance, a way of making architecture act. One might even think of it as making a building dance. This image is part of a diptych (along with 2011.45a) that captures the final moment of stillness before the building’s performance and offers a photographic counterpart to all of the activities that comprise Carroll’s larger project. Using a large format 4x5 camera in the last fading light of a Texan evening, Carroll photographed the facades of the house just prior to rotation—still and quiet, marked with only a few hints of the radical shift about to occur.
