Two Site-Specific Installations

Habeas Corpus site-specific sound installation northampton state hospital noon, november 18, 2000 Turning the building into a sound body.

For the duration of a single performance in November of 2000, Massachusetts' abandoned Northampton State Hospital was filled with J. S. Bach's "Magnificat." Artist Schuleit Haber used the hallways and rooms of the dilapidated structure like the hollow insides of an instrument. Hundreds of speakers, powered by 40,000 watts of audio, were installed in rooms that had not been entered in years. The installation was dedicated "to those who had been there" and was created with sound engineers (Klondike Sound) and seventy volunteers from the community. 15,000 feet of electrical, power distribution, speaker, and signal distribution cable were pulled through the building's 414,000 square feet of interior spaces. All of the windows were opened if they could be opened, for this piece, and then closed again. The process of getting permissions for this installation from the city and state spanned three years.

I am thinking of these men and women when the condemned building and the air around it quicken to the sounding of trumpets and timpani. The perfectly engineered panoply of sound has entered the marrow of my bones and somehow not busted everything along the way. The crowd is a pulsing cloud of humanity, slowly drifting around Old Main. No one dares to peek in the doors and windows to look for the source. As if on cue, the sun parts the concrete-like clouds and pours straight into the heart of Old Main. It is over in 28 minutes. I am wondering if my father is thinking of the destruction of Dresden or of his mother's sudden death right before he shipped off to war. I do know he is deeply affected. "I can't believe what just happened," is all he says.

—NannetteVonnegut, Take Magazine

Bloom, 2003 site-specific installation massachusetts mental health center boston For four days in November of 2003 the Massachusetts Mental Health Center was in bloom.

After Habeas Corpus, Anna went on to complete more site-specific installations in New England. Bloom took place in 2003, for the closing of the Massachusetts Mental Health Centerin Boston. Nearly 28,000 potted flowers filled almost every square foot of the MMHC, including corridors, stairwells, offices, and even a swimming pool, all of it brought to life with a sea of blooms. The public was then invited for a limited four-day viewing, as a time for needed reflection and rebirth.

Before everyone had moved out, a recording of the ambient soundscape of the building was made, which was played during the installation using the old announcement (PA) system of MMHC. Steps in the corridors, doors closing and opening, and passing fragments of conversation were heard at a low volume, bridging the life and commotion of the site with its impending abandonment.

Bloom takes us away from community directly into alienation, and back to our respective isolated psychological struggles. Anna is the rare combination of artist as healer, she settles into the essence of experience. This is the reason that her art is a profoundly private event. It is the healer's goal to bring witness to experience, to offer an expanded view of what it is to be alive. When the healer is also an artist, the alternative view of the world goes beyond semantics and we are left with an image so strong, it changes our belief system.

—J. Beck

Habeas Corpus, 2000 site-specific sound installation All images courtesy of the...