LOOPHOLE

Armories were built in cities to store ammunition, weapons, and other military matériel for the rapid mobilization of reserve forces. Today, an armory is an anachronistic building type. Some of these structures have been converted into art and performance venues. Others have faced the wrecking ball. In 1989, the city of Chicago granted approval for the demolition of the 1st Cavalry Illinois National Guard Armory, which would clear the site for a new building to house the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The Armory was torn down four years later in 1993. The long delay between the approval and the actual demolition of the massive building presented an opportunity to take possession of the space before it was destroyed. The multimedia installation Loophole was created in the context of the exhibition Art at the Armory: Occupied Territory.

The installation traps unwitting visitors in cross-wired circuits of video surveillance as they move through the decrepit building’s twin stair towers. The live image captured by a camera in the north tower is broadcast to a monitor located in the south tower. The two sites are identical except for the different colors of their timeworn paint. If the Armory’s oppressive symmetry once represented military authority, it now serves to disorient its occupants.

Windows in both towers are clad with liquid crystal panels that phase between transparent and translucent states, alternately obscuring and focusing views of specific external sites: an apartment, an office, a hospital room, and a street corner. An unknown voyeur’s obsessively detailed observations are recorded on the window panel and continue onto a second panel mounted on the wall. As the window panel clears, crosshairs aim the visitor’s gaze toward the distant site: the viewer becomes voyeur.

Loophole was created for Art at the Armory: Occupied Territory, a group exhibition curated by Beryl Wright for the Museum of Contemporary Art.