[ double ]

[double] was a one night, site specific installation created at The Timbers Motel in Eugene, OR on 23 November 2002.

room 101 [double] mary flanagan
Hotels are places where we bring bits of our lives, exist for a while in a liminal space, and move on. Sometimes moving on might be returning home, but at others, it may mean relocating to another city, entering into marriage, or even passing to the afterlife. Such transitions surely have taken place at every motel.

I have chosen to work with room 101. In George Orwell's 1984, room 101 was the dreaded room which contained one's deepest and darkest fears-- a place where one was forced to confront the bedrock terror of one's life. It's peculiar, then, that The Timbers Motel strangely reminds me of my parent's home. I grew up with identical wood paneling, for example, that is featured in my room; the décor initially struck me as identical to the taste of my parents, as though the manager and my mother andfather had shopped together for lamps, bedspreads, nightstands. In addition, I ended up with the rare smoker's room, so this too reminds me strongly of home.

Yet I also associate the room with loss and with loneliness. Home, yet not home at all.

[double] investigates the idea of the hotel room as a site for parallel experience with one's waking life. Sleep for a traveler is a troubled, alien sleep, an unreal and in-between experience. The dual life of a traveler -- the sometimes-mirrored relationship between waking and dreaming -- is enduringly present; even registering for the 'double' room reminds the traveler of this fact. Moreover, each room tends to be almost identical, doubles of themselves in an endless chain.

The twin space of the dreamer's restless physicality and dream state is explored in this video work, which conjures a secondary duality between physical and virtual bodies and spaces in the motel. Text whispered from Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler…

read a cached local article
<eugene weekly> about the event
(published before the event)

reviews of the event (forthcoming)

[double] 2002
[double] was a one night, site specific installation created at The Timbers Motel in Eugene, OR on 23 November 2002. room 101 [double] mary flanagan Hotels are places where we bring bits of our lives, exist for a while in a liminal space, and move on. Sometimes moving on might be returning home, but at others, it may mean relocating to another city, entering into marriage, or even passing to the afterlife. Such transitions surely have taken place at every motel. I have chosen to work with room 101. In George Orwell's 1984, room 101 was the dreaded room which contained one's deepest and darkest fears-- a place where one was forced to confront the bedrock terror of one's life. It's peculiar, then, that The Timbers Motel strangely reminds me of my parent's home. I grew up with identical wood paneling, for example, that is featured in my room; the décor initially struck me as identical to the taste of my parents, as though the manager and my mother andfather had shopped together for lamps, bedspreads, nightstands. In addition, I ended up with the rare smoker's room, so this too reminds me strongly of home. Yet I also associate the room with loss and with loneliness. Home, yet not home at all. [double] investigates the idea of the hotel room as a site for parallel experience with one's waking life. Sleep for a traveler is a troubled, alien sleep, an unreal and in-between experience. The dual life of a traveler -- the sometimes-mirrored relationship between waking and dreaming -- is enduringly present; even registering for the 'double' room reminds the traveler of this fact. Moreover, each room tends to be almost identical, doubles of themselves in an endless chain. The twin space of the dreamer's restless physicality and dream state is explored in this video work, which conjures a secondary duality between physical and virtual bodies and spaces in the motel. Text whispered from Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler… read a cached local article <eugene weekly> about the event (published before the event) reviews of the event (forthcoming)	<source video segment> the motelhaus event drew hoards of eager art consumers <photos by franklin miller> <nostalgic timbers motel postcard>