LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE

For the project Learning to Love You More, artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher publish an ongoing series of artistic ‘assignments’. They invite members of the public to complete these assignments and send in reports of their work, which are displayed on the website as well as in books, exhibitions, and other contexts.

The project now includes 68 assignments, most of which have garnered dozens of responses. Assignment #50 from this series is included in The New Normal. The assignment asks respondents to take a flash photo of the space under their bed:

Don’t vacuum or alter anything under your bed beforehand. Take a photo under there with a strong flash, preferably with the camera sitting on the ground. Make sure your photograph is in focus! We are looking for photos that depict the space between the bottom of the bed and the floor, please do not send us photos if your bed is flush against the floor.

It’s a simple but arresting concept. The space beneath our beds might be where monsters lurk, or where we keep shoeboxes full of cash. Sharing this space with others is a kind of confessional act, as in the report filed by Genevieve Sage. Yet in spite of July & Fletcher’s request that respondents not alter anything under their bed, most of the photographs submitted reflect considered stage management, often involving careful placement of household pets.

For the exhibition, we are presenting a selection of 19 photographs that were submitted in response to this project. In addition, I thought it would be in the spirit of the exhibition to complete the assignment myself:

(That’s Roy in the photo).

Thanks are due to the other people who graciously allowed us to include their work in the exhibition: Iris Andrade, Phoenix, Arizona; Mischa Shoni, San Francisco, California; Sam Tan, Malden, Massachusetts; Gabriel Diamond, Berkeley, California; Amy Hanoa, Berkeley, California; Edzen Lebita, Chicago, Illinois; Tyson Soelberg, Seattle, Washington; Mary McAfee, Queensbury, New York; Esther Wieringa, Utrecht, The Netherlands; Frances Wu, New York, New York; Serafina Grace, Upper Marlboro, Maryland; John Palmer, Los Angeles, California; Genevieve Sage, Seattle, Washington; Sarah Thomas, Oakland, California; Jazmyn Wilburn, Fort Myers, Florida; Laura Hernando, Madrid, Spain; GuruAmrit Khalsa, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Ashley Hutton, Washington, DC; Michael Harwell, Houston, Texas.