Tether Unit

Title: Tether Unit 
Time/Place: 2020 Fort Worden State Park while Artist In Residence at The Centrum Foundation in Port Townsend, Washington USA for the month of October, 2020

Size: varies
Materials: discarded metal fold up “wheel away” bed frame, wheels, handmade cardboard mat, box spring fabric sheet printed with turn of century coast artillery fort building plans, wood, re-wired security motion lights, electrical cord, portable head pillow

Details (condensed):
Tether Unit is a mobile performative sculpture, a tool on the move in which to seek moments of survival, opportunistic existence within a dysfunctional system.

Details (expanded):
Tether Unit is a mobile performative sculpture, a tool on the move in which to seek moments of survival, opportunistic existence within a dysfunctional system. This work reflects on notions of security and surveillance culture while exploring a defunct turn of the century Fort Worden coast artillery fort. This place came into being as a plan for coastal defense, a component in the “Triangle of Fire” in tandem with Fort Flagler and Fort Casey. What is it like for a community to plan for coastal defense, and what is it like to live within the tactical and non tactical structures left behind?

Components of Tether Unit are made in an effort to formally and conceptually connect to, be supported by, and blend into, provided safety from, the surroundings. Tether Unit is made from a discarded bed frame that is most likely military surplus. Minimal sleeping materials are carried within the fold up bare metal bed: two cardboard sleeping mats, a narrow white sheet-like fabric and a small travel head pillow. The cardboard sleeping mat created with handmade cardboard, is made with a paper making process connected to paper cast-offs and the nearby paper mill factory making cardboard. The cardboard mat is painted with an assortment of numbers duplicating the exterior numbering system on each  of the non tactical buildings within Fort Worden. The numbering system depicts a variety of era-specific fonts, instead of a unified font and thus carry with them some of the timeline since the fort deactivation  in 1953. The narrow white sheet made from discarded box spring fabric is printed with line drawing plans for coastal defense. The black line drawings are copies of the 1898-1920 floor plans used to build the batteries and defense buildings at Fort Worden and arranged in a square grid, quilt block pattern on the sheet surface. 

Much like the fort, which never saw active fire, Tether Unit becomes a life-integrated mode of operation, not actively under fire yet immersed within an invisible daily survival mechanism used to provide a sense of security within the unknown, a place under day to day constant potential threat. This location is seeped with fortifications surrounded by security and surveillance, yet is now defunct existing as tangible remnants of an attempt at security. Making an attempt at security is not always a safe feeling. Existing through constant implementing of survival mechanisms relate to how I think about the notion of tethering. The notion of tethering allows for a range of motion albeit limited and is connected to my thoughts about survival at this specific time in our history within perpetuating dysfunctional systems. My sculptural sketches and work in process with Tether Unit and my time at Centrum on the Fort Worden grounds allowed me to expand my thoughts and feelings of security as it stretches beyond the individual and beyond myself.