The Observation Room, an installation, performance, and video work by The Bridge Club collaborative will open with a one night performance not to be missed. The exhibition will be on view at 1708 Gallery from July 17 through August 15, 2009.

The Observation Room incorporates a Victorian notion that our identities can be contained by our possessions and surroundings, and that our stories can be told by what we leave behind. The multipart exhibition features four related components: a one-night performance, on July 17th at 6 pm calling to mind the fictitious historical reenactment seen at Colonial Williamsburg or any ‘living history’ museum; an exhibit invoking the carefully arranged display of a history museum; a built environment containing a series of domestic spatial vignettes; and a video depicting the physical use of historic objects and preserving a record of their function in familiar documentary fashion.

Using simultaneously the conventions of contemporary art—clean white walls, oversized video projection, and temporal, live performance—as well as the conventions of historic preservation, The Observation Room challenges and conflates our ideas about the collection and preservation of art and objects, and points to the viewer’s complicity in designations of value and construction of narrative.

The Bridge Club is a collaborative art and performance group consisting of artists Emily Ward Bivens, Christine Owen, Annie Strader, and Julie Wills. For further information, visit The Bridge Club’s website at www.thebridgeclub.net.