lightwell

2015
installed at Xenia, a group installation viewed and inhabited via Air BnB rental.
Curated by Robert Rhee

television, camera, light


This project, Xenia, is an experimental format for hosting people and art together. The central purpose is to stimulate the kinds of encounters that artists have with their own work: encounters that takes place over prolonged spans of time, simultaneous with one's daily life, and in which judgment/interpretation is not called upon like a test in front of each new thing, but instead arrives when and where it is appropriate.

Rice’s contribution Lightwell, a live video feed of the house’s light well, provides a slowly changing view of an otherwise unseen space in the building’s architecture.


...the place has been on Airbnb since March and is booked more nights than not. For $100 a night, you check in at 9 a.m. and check out at 1 p.m. the next day. It's quite the 28 hours.

In the middle of my night at Xenia, I woke up thirsty. Stumbling out of the bedroom, I found the entire living room glowing as if it were on fire. No, it wasn't a mirage of half-sleep that disappeared when I rubbed my eyes. It was the entire common area of the condo glazed hot red.

It took me a second. Then I realized that the red light was emanating from a live feed on the TV monitor on the living room floor. This had been a work of art I'd been looking at all day, except it looked nothing like it looked all day.

The art didn't change, the sky did. During the day, the live feed—of a skylight—showed the shape of the skylight and the shifting natural light. What I didn't notice during the day is the red artificial light sitting next to the camera, looking faint because of the stronger daylight. But as night fell, the red rose. Until it became this fever.

On the paper stuck to the fridge by a magnet, all it said about that work of art was "Tivon Rice's Live Video Feed/Living Room/The television has been turned on for you. It shows a live feed. If you require, you may turn it off. Please do not adjust it otherwise."

If I had not been thirsty, I never would have seen the light show. I doddered back to bed feeling charmed, knowing in the morning, the fever would be gone without a trace.


Excerpt from Artbnb - Xenia Turns Condo Rental into an Installation, Jen Graves, The Stranger, May 13, 2015