In Texas, an Artist Plans to Rotate a House 180 Degrees
By Joyce Wadler
October 6, 2010
Mary Ellen Carroll. Megan Thompson for The New York Times
The one-story Houston house that she plans to rotate as a conceptual art project. Kenny Trice
Kenny Trice
Sometime later this month, Mary Ellen Carroll, a conceptual artist who has been lecturing for the last
few years at Rice University’s school of architecture, will oversee the 180-degree rotation of a small onestory house in the Houston suburb of Sharpstown, a once-prosperous postwar planned community that
has suffered economic reversals. The project, “prototype 180,” will be streamed live on the Web.
When exactly is hard to say — a telephone interview with Ms. Carroll, who was at the house, was
interrupted last week when one of the jacks broke. But Ms. Carroll, 48, whose work has been exhibited
around the world, including at the Whitney Museum in New York, cheerfully resumed the interview
earlier this week.
You’ve done a lot of interesting things, including having a stolen car dropped into a sculpture park in
upstate New York, where it would look as if it had been abandoned.
Yes, the point was, upstate it could be something you could actually encounter. The idea was to take
something that could exist and put it where it actually belonged, conceptually. A few years later, they
asked me to do another work, and I decided to do the thing in reverse — exhume it and bury it.
How did you know the car was really stolen?
Because I ended up getting it at a police auction.
Now you’re going to rotate a house 180 degrees. How much will this whole thing cost?
That’s an obvious question, and not the right one. You have to contextualize it. This is really, really
important, in that the whole concept of “prototype 180” is a conceptual work of art that will make
architecture perform in the historical trajectory. Where I began was in thinking about monumentality,
how in the ’60s and ’70s you had these monumental works of art — not the public works, but Robert
Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” work in Salt Lake and Walter De Maria’s “The Lightning Field.” Then you have
the way things shifted in the ’80s and ’90s, and architecture usurped that gesture of monumentality.
Why rotate a house 180 degrees?
First of all, it was necessary for the building that work was done for it — it hadn’t been inhabited for 13
years. And to have something as a model or laboratory that points to the issue of planning and urbanism
and how we live and we work. But then to actually do it and have that gesture of the shift from the front
to the back be the visual cue and physical cue in terms of generating a series of questions that one may
have, which could evolve or not to the asking of how and why things are done in the way in which they
are — and that everything in the building is going to be reconsidered.
Part of the reason I’m in Houston, and the reason the project is taking place here, is because of the lack
of land-use policy, because there is no zoning. And that’s the foundation of this entire thing. Policy is a
kind of readymade material, and so “prototype 180” uses the condition of the urban condition of
Houston. Because what’s implied in that is categorized as sort of a free-enterprise city where the market
determines where things need to be.
So let me get this straight: What you hope to do with turning the house 180 degrees is to make people
question the lack of urban planning in Houston?
No, it’s to make people engage in the consideration of how they live and how they work. If you see
something that is turned around in relation to the rest of the area that it is in — say, you could have a
box of knives, and one is flipped around — when they are all the same, you don’t begin to consider it.
But if something has slightly changed positions, it has its own autonomy. It then, in and of itself,
becomes some kind of free enterprise, if you will, that goes back to the culture of Houston.
How do the neighbors feel about this? Won’t it hurt property values?
I don’t see how. This house was boarded up for years.
Did you talk to the neighbors?
One of the things I did in the neighborhood and with the civic association was give a presentation. And
then there were also direct conversations. I said that they’ve known we actually had the property for
two years and that it’s been maintained. Generally, when I have had conversations, they’re very pleased
that something is being done to this uninhabited house.
How were you able to buy the house and do this project?
I formed a corporation and went to both collectors of mine and people I thought might be interested in
supporting it. I wanted people to invest in the idea and the impact of what it would ultimately be. It was
also about being selected to participate in this — it wasn’t some random blanketing of people. I always
bring it back to the point of how and why.
And I always bring it back to “How much?” How much is this project going to cost?
Probably about $300,000.
If turning a house 180 degrees is art, what do you call a house being driven down a highway?
It’s a house being driven down a highway.
Information on “prototype 180” is at prototype180.com.
Wadler, Joyce. “In Texas, an Artist Plans to Rotate a House 180 Degrees.” The New York Times (October 6, 2010)
[online].
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/garden/07qna.html