A former funeral parlour is the site of Labspace Studio’s latest art project.
A car came to a quick stop in front of a defunct funeral home on Tuesday morning, as a half-dozen east-end artists dragged their materials inside. The driver leaned out the window and yelled, “Don’t go in there! That place is haunted!” The artists laughed. The driver shook his head. He was dead serious.
No ghosts materialized, but hidden behind the funeral parlour’s double doors and stained-glass windows was a sprawling first-floor labyrinth: 3,500 square feet of barren rooms, poorly lit hallways and nearly collapsed closets.
From Friday night until Sunday, however, the former Washington and Johnston Funeral Chapel—which has sat unused for five years—will transform into Labspace Studio’s latest art project, “In Memory: Something that happens after then, and before now.” Fifteen pairs of multidisciplinary artists will offer installations that explore the instability of memory.
Early Tuesday, those installations began to take shape. In the empty front room, below four chandeliers missing half their light bulbs, curators John Loerchner and Laura Mendes assembled a small pool from plywood. Its final resting place will be a nearby closet, accompanied by a video of Mendes dancing underwater.
“Water’s a good metaphor for memory,” Mendes said. “Some memories are clear, some are murky, some are buried at the very bottom.” In order to recreate the video’s shimmering light, Loerchner will set up spotlights and place speakers beneath the pool.
“The sound should ripple the water, which will create reflections on the wall,” he said, and laughed. “At least, that’s the plan—I’ve never done this before.”
In another room, a garbage-bag base went down for a bed of sand; across the hall, in the non-functioning body elevator, two guys spoke about rigging the lighting to create the illusion of descent. (When the artists first accessed the space, they took turns spooking themselves out by locking each other in the body elevator and killing the lights.) There was also some discussion of deadlines—Mendes would prefer the artists finish their installations by Thursday, so she could focus on getting the booze for the bar. “The funeral parlour’s owner told us to be careful with the wine,” she said, rolling her eyes and gesturing to the filthy carpet.
“I really wonder what some of those stains are,” Loerchner added. Then he caught himself. “Oh, maybe I don’t.”
