Kate Garaufis, "Lockers"

Sophie Calle's The Hotel was the inspiration for my project. Calle used espionage-like tactics to gain access to, and meticulously document the possessions of the guests in a hotel. Through careful and detailed photographs and descriptions of the findings, the viewer suddenly finds himself extrapolating on the "evidence" and judging the owner. I chose this piece because the idea of faceless objects creating an image of the person who owns them fascinates me. Also, the personal feeling of exploring someone's possessions lends itself well to interactivity. My school, Stuyvesant HS, is often accused of taking away personal identities and replacing them with identification numbers. In Lockers, I decided to find out whether Stuy kids in fact had any interesting qualities, through the only personal space afforded us by the school: the lockers. Would they be filled with physics textbooks and calculators, or something more unique? I invaded three lockers, two of which are shared by a pair of students, glimpsing into the lives of five unsuspecting students. Though my results are a little strange, they're no less representative of Stuy than physics textbooks and calculators.

 

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