Frackhouse

Artist’s Statement

I developed Frackhouse: Choose Your Path, an Interactive Tea House that addresses fracking through a traditional ‘Chinese Teahouse’ metaphor. It deals with the topic of natural gas fracking. I have examined fracking from my years researching and fighting it.

I’ve created an abstraction of the original Chinese teahouse built by Rikyiu, the first tea master.  Like the original, my teahouse itself is meant to come alive and be the ‘virtual tea master’. Attendees pass through, receiving a message, just as a tea master would have lead them in the past. As with a teahouse, the message is about nature and our place in the world. Rather than lecture the participants, my teahouse experience is meant to be meditative and, at the same time, confrontational. It is a FrackHouse.

Recordings of voices that represent those who have been personally harmed by fracking, create an ambient soundscape. Some of these come from an audio sculpture made from clips of collaborator Kirsi Jansa’s “Gas Rush Stories”. Names of those hurt by fracking are engraved in the walls, in the nature of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial. An original composition, Jasmine Flower, by collaborator and Chinese composer/instrumentalist Jing Wang, winner of the Pauline Oliveros Award, is also heard. Intermittent and unpredictable vibrations erupt from the floor of the Frackhouse – referencing the unnaturally induced earthquakes produced in the land by the intrusive practice of fracking.

The red sail roof references water and is influenced by the work of James Turrell. Red has nearly opposite meanings in China and the United States.  In China, red symbolizes good luck. Red is strictly forbidden at funerals as it is a traditionally symbolic color of happiness; however, as the names of the dead were previously written in red, it may be considered offensive to use red ink for Chinese names in contexts other than official seals. In the west, red is the color of extremes. Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. It is a warm and positive color associated with our most physical needs and our will to survive. It also means stop. Black will enter in at a later stage.

Frackhouse is a contemporary iteration of a teahouse as a place of transformation and enlightenment. This is meant to be an environment that embeds those passing through with a message but does not lecture. It has recordings of voices that represent those who have been personally harmed by fracking, a list which is growing monthly by the thousands.