The Blazing World

Zachary Dortmund (review of The Suffocation Rooms, Art Assembly, March 30, 2001)

The interest of Phineas Q. Eldridge’s installation The Suffocation Rooms at Alex Begley lies in its subversion of the clean aesthetic associated with avant-garde modernism, as well as the easy pop consumerism of the Young British Artists. Its invitation to the spectator, however, remains private. Unlike the practice of an artist such as Tiravanija, whose open works invite DIY interaction, Eldridge’s closed rooms are walk-throughs. This is not fully relational art, to cite Nicolas Bourriaud. It is not altermodern. Nevertheless, the successive real environments may pack a punch that is ultimately more subversive than the accommodating relationalism advocated by Bourriaud. The transgendered figure that reappears in each room summons the delirious machine subjectivity of Guattari, a self-technology of desire and a body without organs, which echoes Eldridge’s life as a queering performer onstage. The chaos of the final room has genuine political bite.