William Higgins

Pa/Rasites
December 20, 2021

When I last wrote my proposal, I was attempting to grapple with the relationship between the home and those who reside in it. The pieces I created were a reflection of this axiom, what is the relationship between home and resident? Is it Parasitic? Symbiotic?

The turn that my work has taken affirms me to delve deeper into this relationship but to allow myself to be immersed within the process rather than taking the wheel, so to speak. I may have hit the gas in the past but this car is going to coast from now on. I am choosing to allow myself the opportunity to drift with my project. I still stand by the idea that habitation of any structure to the point of personalization and accommodation is in a sense a relationship with both parasitic and symbiotic connotations. But in the realm of symbiosis, the human element is a vital functionary of the organism. Much like platelets we stymie the flow of blood outside of a closed system. Which is to say, we make repairs to maintain the greatest sum of the habitat's parts. If I am to continue down the path this project is taking me, one vital element must be considered… Do I internalize the feelings of the house? Is it just an allegory for me? A reflection even. Do I feel used? Lately I have reviewed the themes of my thesis and it feels as though I must ask, who is being used in this scenario, and does it even matter?

The main change I’ve seen in regards to this project is that of the tonality. Where before It was my (unfinished) written narrative fueling the discussion with a sense of moral gray But undercurrents favoring the house. The tonality has become more ambiguous than that due to the blanks left open by the photographic element. Not to say I don’t appreciate the heightened ambiguity, it is fine, just not the way I interpreted things playing out.

Needless to say, I am more than intrigued to see how this new wave of works play out and I hope that the shift in tonality broadens what I am able to accomplish within my work.


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Pa\Rasite
9 September 2021

In Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Props assist the House”, she pontificates on coming-of-age through the perspective of a newly built home, divorced from its momentarily fastened rigging, allowed to stand resolute to the weathers and whims of an uncaring earth.

In this brief thought towards the life and tribulations of a home -- forged from the hardness, eventuality and chaos, but shaped by the care of it’s creator — one must ask themself what a home must feel if neither are present. What if the house had no beginning? No end? No hardship? No purpose? Ultimately, it is a question of who wishes to help and to harm. We as humans see our relationship with the home as something purely beneficial towards its continued existence. We wash it. We mend it. We weatherize it. We undoubtedly have a part to play in it staying around. But, as much as we work towards its benefit, we violate the prebuilt ecosystems that they’re built on. We hoard. We break. We smash down the very walls to make room for a couch and two loveseats that don’t even match the rug. The question I seek to answer in this project is, what would a house as a living, breathing organism do when face to door with humanity. Would it see us as a necessary step in its evolution? Like the mitochondria and the cell? Or would it seek any means of purging us from itself?

I feel as though telling this parable through both traditional diorama and digital sculpture would be the best place to start and perhaps branch out into video making later on with the assets provided. The idea of metaphysicality in the fact that this house is an organism in its own right feels as though it needs some grounding in the real world in order to have the intended effect. That being said I hope to join together these elements to lead myself to a more concrete history of this house.

As a child I never really had a place to call home. I mean I was with family under a roof but it was always someone else’s home. Whether it was my mom’s boss’s old yoga space, made fit for human habitation or a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, home as a place of my own choosing or that of my family’s choosing is an alien concept. I’ve always felt like an intruder waiting for some alarm to go off or something to that very dramatic effect.

(The name Pa\Rasite is derived from the word parasite and rasite. Rasite is the finnish word for burden or in legal terms it would imply someone who is in a position of servitude or encumbrance.)

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Pa/Rasites: Portfolio book