La Sonnette

An interactive doorbell to the ether. This piece is a large chime, with a single pull, and about 1000 common house nails. In the development of the work, I thought a lot about the nails and found them a robust symbol for potential and desire in leaving them un-hammered. The piece feels like a huge doorbell, but the term, “doorbell” is so large and clunky. The sound of La Sonnette is a delicate tinkling, it is a little song, light and gentle, and serves well as title for a doorbell of entreaty to the ethereal planes. The nails are presented outside their manufactured function. Superstitiously and magically, nails are used to bind, to hold, and like most symbolically empowered objects, to bring favor. To prepare the nails for hanging, I “worked” the twine into knots, pulling and entwining, bewitching the threads, to ordain and immanentize their power. Here, they call, they ring, they vibrate with unfocused energy. They are an accumulation of possibility, little pieces amassed to a formidable force of transference.