Diverted History: the Lost Work of Pierre Menard, Gallery Installation

Diverted History was a 5,000 sf installation commissioned by curator Terri Hopkins for the Marylhurst College Art Gym.

The “Diverted History” installation emerged from Jorge Louis Borges’ story Pierre Menard. In the story, fictional 19th century character Pierre Menard attempts rewrite Cervantes’ 17th century Don Quixote, verbatim. This rewriting raises questions about the fixed nature of authorship, as text and meaning are subjected to forces of evolution. The sculptures in “Diverted History” were re-presented as the “other lost works of Pierre Menard” created in a Menardian spirit of impassioned pointlessness. The sculptures existed as spectacular dead ends, oscillating between invention and repetition, emergence and dissolution.

List of Lost inventions:
– Aural Bricks / Listening Wall; 2 cubits x 27 cubits x 336 cubits
– Polyfunnel; isolated and inverted palindromes.
– Cloud Reconstructor; sought to recreate a remembered cloud from over Sudan at 3.45pm, Nov 7th, 1955.
– Night Machine; continually measures the line between day and night.
– Catastrophe Tool; pendulum like- it draws and simultaneously erases anything drawn.
– Cerebraphone: Listens for the sound of human emergence.
– Universal Body Part; casting molds to make ears, hearts, genitalia.
– The Generator: Pierres workshop
– Teratomas (actual)- “tumors made up of several different types of tissue, such as hair, muscle, teeth, or bone. They typically form in the ovary, testicle, or tailbone and less commonly in other areas.”