My greatest fear of disaster is that I will be left with no place or resource to call my own. I do not want to live in a public shelter, again. I do not want to depend on a government to choose what I can do, what I can eat, where I can be, for my own, or the public's "good".
While these are important fears for myself, I have never truly camped for even a weekend. I do not even have a tent currently, I often rely on those of other's, either through renting or borrowing. I could easily be on my own with no help, in a time of crisis.
So I am going to make a yurt that I can live in out of found materials from my home. Yurts are portable, collapsible home-structures. They often take an extended period of time to make, but I will emphasize my necessity for immediacy and willingness to improve.
I can video tape the process, if necessary for the assignment, I can document a video and text/image diary for the sake of notation and collection.
I will not exceed a weekend in implementing it's construction. I will perform within it over the weekend prior to the exhibition. It will be a test of my capacity to be resourceful and independent. I will work with the scenario that my home has to be evacuated between noon and midnight on the Friday of that weekend. All of my materials will be carried out of my house, and brought behind houghton on foot or wheels (like a wagon or a skooter, not a car). I will prepare an amount of food and water appropriate for this period. If I cannot make a proper structure in time, I will sleep on the ground, or be forced to seek a shelter that is unlocked, and not my own home, supposing that I cannot return to my own established space. I will also eliminate Houghton as a possibility unless I can break into the space somehow, as my keycard lock would not work in a power outage.
I can video tape the process, if necessary for the assignment, I can document a video and text/image diary for the sake of notation and collection.
I will not exceed a weekend in implementing it's construction. I will perform within it over the weekend prior to the exhibition. It will be a test of my capacity to be resourceful and independent. I will work with the scenario that my home has to be evacuated between noon and midnight on the Friday of that weekend. All of my materials will be carried out of my house, and brought behind houghton on foot or wheels (like a wagon or a skooter, not a car). I will prepare an amount of food and water appropriate for this period. If I cannot make a proper structure in time, I will sleep on the ground, or be forced to seek a shelter that is unlocked, and not my own home, supposing that I cannot return to my own established space. I will also eliminate Houghton as a possibility unless I can break into the space somehow, as my keycard lock would not work in a power outage.
Hopefully in this space I will be able to find a sense of peace, place, and agency over a weekend's time. If I can't manage that, I suppose I'm doomed.
Research will be conducted over the next two weeks. This weekend I will be speaking with a practicing expert, Jared Littlefield, who has been lived in more than one more temporary yurt, and has built his own, more "permanent" structure over this past Summer, which he currently still lives in, in coastal Maine. (I have not been to this yurt, but I have seen photographs, and it is decked out. I guarantee he can advise me on which found materials will help keep me warm, dry, happy, etc.
http://www.yurtinfo.org/yurtplans.php
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