The downstairs room of the former First Church of Christ, Scientist (440 East Avenue, Rochester NY) was used as a nursery; the wallpaper, on two of the walls, was original to the space. I altered parts of that wallpaper and the shelves and I employed preexisting bulletin boards and a speaker. (The audio of the church service used to be piped into the space so the children could hear it.) The spaces upstairs were two of twenty adjacent three-walled areas that formed the church’s Reading Room.
The nursery was the first of three spaces accessed by Compartmented visitors. Viewers entered to find a large heap of cedar mulch – sometimes used as bedding for rabbits – piled about three feet high in the opposite corner and ten live-animal traps baited with carrots placed on the floor. The edited audio (excerpt below) playing in a 15 minute loop was sourced from a current online Christian Science site. On the walls, some of the rabbit pattern closest to the speaker morphed into photographic representations of rabbits. Many of the preexisting shelves were converted to rabbit pens – each very similar to the others. One space in the closet took on the appearance of a desk. Several printed and altered screen-captures were posted to the preexisting bulletin boards on the wall opposite the larger wallpapered expanse; behind them I pinned pages from a 1977 Christian Science Monitor (periodical).
A walk upstairs to the Reading Room eventually brought the viewer to a space, painted to match the downstairs nursery. A young woman sat reading at a desk. She was surrounded with objects common to a temporary study space. A pile of cedar mulch was in the far corner and a live white rabbit ran freely around her feet. The room next to it was designed to be indistinguishable in every manner. Seated at the desk was an identical twin and similar white rabbit ran freely behind the Plexiglas barrier that formed the 4th wall of the two spaces. The actors concentrated on reading and had very limited exchanges with the viewers.
In my youth I asked my mother where babies came from. She said, “ A mommy and a daddy pray really hard and if they are lucky they are blessed with a baby.” My childhood grasp of existence clung on proofless belief and an inculcation of dubious realities and ungrounded doctrines. The title of this work is drawn from the opening line of the main text for the Church of Christian Science: “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings.” Certain that my own existence is minutely inconsequential in relation to the universe that supports me, I can only assume that any intersection with its core is more likely to happen through an incalculably small chance as opposed to any concerted effort of mine.
A space where children could only hear and not be heard serves to effectively (re)stage the snares of my own religious history. Adjacent a faith where complete spiritual understanding requires a comprehension of the ‘unreal,’ I point to processes that minimize differentiation among its devotees – where extreme sameness approaches the uncanny.
