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The Cooper Union Tactical Plan, 2001

Dimensions and materials variable

The Tactical Plan, my senior show at Cooper Union, took the everyday environment of the school as a starting place and attempted to imagine a different use for the space of the school. I was given the lobby to exhibit work in. Rather than fill the space with work, I brought the furniture already inside the space out of the periphery and into the center of the work. Each day of the exhibition, I moved the furniture into new compositions. The work was also a kind of game; it was pleasurable seeing what could be done with the boring furniture.

In addition to the furniture intervention, I also displayed four paintings, which I had discovered in one of the school's offices. The paintings, made during the 1970s, showed an outdated plan for the redevelopment of the area of New York City surrounding the school. The title, The Tactical Plan, played on the name of a committee of investors and advisers set up by the new president of the school to assess the school's financial situation an propose restructuring: the Strategic Planning Committee.

Along with the installation and paintings, I exhibited two posters and a children's activity book intended to parody the bureaucratic style of the planning committee and cast light on the effect such urban redevelopment plans would have on the local neighborhood. Since my graduation in 2001, the area has been widely redeveloped and the school has built a new academic building and a high-rise building has been built on a neighboring lot.