Crashing with friends, friends of friends, or complete strangers does require a certain mental constitution; from locating the least-creaky floorboards to mask your midnight fridge raids to taking 90 second showers, you must survive on as much kindness/cunning as possible without irking your host. But is it ahrrrt? This morning the NY Times looks at the life of nomadic artist Kenya Robinson, who has dubbed her 13 week odyssey in other people's apartments "The Inflatable Mattress."
Robinson, who uses "melted Goody combs, synthetic blond hair and women's magazines" in her pieces, was inspired by the travels of the heartsick NYC Nomad, and lives in a different home every week, doing up to 10 hours of chores for her benefactors. So far, so good, as the story notes one satisfied customer praising her as "super-tidy" and her blog describes her doing low maintenance roommate-y things like drinking a bottle of wine and watching Nashville.
But looking at the types of toothpaste she's using (an amenity that she asks be provided for her) it doesn't appear that she's roughing it. Colgate Whitening, Tom's of Maine, Burt's Bees. Burt's Bees?! Where's the Aim? Where's the Signal? A curator at the gallery Kitchen, explains the loophole as "in general, if we say something is an art piece, it's an art piece." One of Robinson's hosts does a little "unpacking" for us: "she's co-oping a social form…that's part of the material fabric of modern life, and then putting it in the public sphere." Oh, and she's going to Yale to get her MFA next year.
Which allows me introduce Cold Pinto Beans & High Life: Analyzing the Duality of Man Through "Mad About You" Reruns, which is currently showing in my apartment for an indefinite period of time.
