Spirochetes of Contact

2012-2020; 24 original SX-70 Polaroids, wooden support structure conceived in collaboration with and fabricated by Sylvie Rosenthal. Installation.
Dimensions variable.
  

Casid’s installation, Spirochetes of Contact, takes us to that other New York island, Fire Island (one of the epicenters of the AIDS crisis and Lyme Disease) in the form of the boardwalk as cruising ground where we “pick up” on all its various meanings – sex, ideas, drugs, viruses, conversation. Casid heightens our felt sense of the material volatility of the original Polaroids by exposing them on top of the equally precarious support structure of the wooden boardwalk to engage us in intimate encounter with the images and their fragile supports as vulnerable material sites of and for our desire.

New version exhibited in Indisposable: Tactics for Care and Mourning, Oct. 1-Dec. 10, 2022, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York. Curated by Jessica A. Cooley and Ann M. Fox.

Exhibited with selection of Polaroids by Andy Warhol, in Faculty 2020 exhibition juried by Gary Garrido Schneider (Executive Director of Grounds for Sculpture), Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, February 1-May 17, 2020.

Listen to Audio of Visual Description of Installation at Ford Foundation Gallery.