My undergraduate Studio Art thesis began with two core questions:

• How do physical and hidden/metaphysical (i.e. cultural, administrative) architectures shape interpersonal connection at Wesleyan University?
• How can generational and academic norms be disrupted through [communal] architectural and artistic intervention?

Wesleyan University’s president champions “safe enough spaces.” But I wondered whether those spaces provided ample room for personal expression and discourse.

My dad went to Wesleyan, and graduated in 1987. The school has, and has had since that time, a reputation for being weird—a little offbeat, despite its “little ivy” aspirations. But in speaking with graduates from each decade, I learned this reputation was evanescent. Students, beginning mid 2010s, only felt “Wesleyan’s weird” in fleeting moments—it seemed a remnant of a bygone era.

Though I was quick to blame administrative changes, the reasons were bipartite. Students realize campus culture through active engagement in their community, and we seemed to spend far more time straining for prestige than our predecessors. Perhaps this was a generational shift, or an aftershock of social media’s insistence on one-dimensional relationships. In any case, we were as much to blame as the admin.

The project needed to happen collaboratively. Working alone would have been antithetical to its [admittedly grand] aspirations, so I took advantage of our school’s infrastructure for student-led for-credit courses.

ARST419: Structures of SubversionJump to "ARST419: Structures of Subversion"

Generational, cultural, and academic norms are subtly subverted with [directed] artistic and ephemeral forms — “happenings”. By questioning our own roles in Middletown’s community, we can resist anxieties and biases that may preclude human connection.

Members: Orlando Osgood, Coley Cassidy, Malachi Johns, Elias Seignourel, Mason Bunton, Ronan Costello, and Finn Flackett-Levin.

Though I planned and facilitated ARST419, class sessions and events were all collaborative endeavours, with each student taking the lead on a project they were passionate about.

The following projects were Kaprow-style “happenings,” orchestrated by ARST419.

A “project”Jump to "A “project”"

A “project” was the group’s first happening: an exploration of the limestone blocks that make up Wesleyan’s Kevin Roche-designed Center for the Arts as a medium for impermanent artwork and catalyst for community engagement. Students programmed and promoted the event.

The happening had a low turnout, and helped inform our understanding of how to catalyze cultural buy-in. The group came up with a list of ideals and corresponding criteria:

Ideals

• Humor
• Inversion
• Instinct (vs intellect)
• Gut response
• Floodlight > spotlight: happenings should illuminate the social processes they engage with. It would be disingenuous to pick and choose what we “like” or “dislike” of these.
• Refraction: This illumination should be self-referential and recursive.

Criteria

• Engages community
• “Lubricates” (alleviates friction, taboo)
• Unresolved at its start
• “Calls out”

Trick or TreatJump to "Trick or Treat"

Wesleyan Seniors were invited to add themselves to a registry of addresses distributing candy on Halloween, which was then distributed as digital and physical maps around Middletown, Connecticut. In an otherwise car-centric city, this provided local kids with a safe environment in which to celebrate.

The BellJump to "The Bell"

Observing the invisible social architecture of standardized class periods, class members recruited twenty students to audibly signify start and end times. These students were instructed to:

• Ring your bell at the start and end of class times.
• Ring your bell before entering class
• Ring your bell after exiting class
• Do not ring your bell beyond 2 minutes before or after the designated time.
• Carry two additional bells and recruit curious individuals.

The project ran for two weeks in November.

No-chalk HopscotchJump to "No-chalk Hopscotch"

Drawing in sidewalk chalk is banned on Wesleyan’s campus and enforced with penalties as harsh as—sometimes harsher than—permanent vandalism.

Wesleyan has a rich history of distracting prospective student tours with flavourful antics. With generations of such mischief-making in mind, the class played a modified leapfrog-hopscotch around our most central green, Andrus Field. We used hand-brazed frames, constructed out of aluminum angles by yours truly.

We kept going long after the crowd faded. Touring families and facilities staff alike approached us afterwards to thank us for whatever it was we were doing.

Desire LinesJump to "Desire Lines"

A desire path (also known as desire line in transportation planning and by many other names[a]) is an unplanned small trail formed by erosion caused by human or animal traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or the most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and severity of its surface erosion are often indicators of the traffic level it receives.

A fascination of mine since my first year at Wesleyan: Snow on Andrus Field makes visible the invisible architecture of congregation and movement across campus. We set out to map this even more tangibly, harkening back to our “call-out” ideal. Working to leave only a positive impact, we settled on garden lime as a medium—a soil enhancer. We were met with a metric ton of bureaucratic red tape, but managed to mark movement patterns in Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts in the days before Winter break.

HappenspaceJump to "Happenspace"

The happenspace was a physical emblem for campus, designed to engage the same ideals as ARST419’s happenings, and respond to the course’s research.

I distilled my working questions:

• Where on campus does true student agency still reign?
• How can we bridge the gap between Wesleyan students and Middletown residents?
• What would a haven for students look like—a “third space” on campus to connect [with one another] and disconnect [from the rhetoric of production].

And strove to build something…

• modular, such that it functioned in parts or a sum of such;
• readily-replicable on any college campus with similar aspirations for community-building;
• ephemeral—quick to assemble and disassemble—like a happening;
• and context-adaptable, so it would feel at home in Wesleyan, but equally so elsewhere.

I initially worked from “hippie modernist” precedents, such as Ant Farm’s Inflatocookbook and the pop-culture approach to architecture championed by groups such as Archigram.

I found children’s play-parachutes to be an ideal: an ephemeral object uniting peers—contingent on their collaboration to take shape.

Though the inflatable structure was scrapped, I maintained the experiential quality of inhabiting a blow-up—the feeling of looking skyward, at both the space you’re enclosed by, and what lies beyond. I removed walls, allowing for entry and exit from any approach.

The final plan was twofold: a module, built from hardware store parts, and adaptable to any communal use. And a pavilion, built from six modules, and building a cylindrical gathering space, like that of a campfire.

The squat cylindrical form was borrowed from an icon of Wesleyan University’s architectural history: McConaughy Hall, or MoCon.

I planned to exhibit the structure in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery with my peers’ theses, and then deploy it around Wesleyan’s campus. My prior works precluded this public exhibition, at the behest of the Art department, despite the university administration’s approval.