street material found air
Within the room, a window-mounted air conditioning unit hangs with its front facing the wall, and the side usually on the outside of a building, facing the room. Since the unit is running within an enclosed space, the exhaust heat blowing from the condenser side cancels out any cool air blowing from the front. Though the effects of air conditioning are neutralised here, other effects become more prominent, like the buzzing roar of the motor reverberating through the room, the occasional clatter, and squeal from the stressed mechanisms inside. The battered condenser fins tagged with ‘EXIST’ across the side, are now directed at the occupants of this confined space. The warm air coming from the condenser has a dank, metallic and dusty aroma. The air conditioner in its honest and whirring presence refuses to be invisible. The ceiling is low and pulsing with contents uncontained. On the other side of the room is Citadine Isolation , framed by found acrylic glass with a surface of fine lenticular ridges. It contains polyurethane insulation from a construction site for a condo building. The process of installing spray foam insulation on the exterior of a building is messy, as the foam expands and later is trimmed around windows and doors. I collected some of this material and tried to piece it together. The foam, initially a light yellow, photo- oxidised in the summer sun and turned crispy brown and cracked throughout. It now resembles something like rock, or dry earth. Under the lenticular lens, the surfaces close to the glass come into focus while the rest appear as a blur, shifting when viewed from different angles. The insulation in this housing asks us to see it as it is, but also as it eludes. Building materials, especially those used for weather control operate with opacity, and can come to bear a closeness which is not chosen. They outgas, leak, breakdown and permeate beyond their designated containers. How is it that materials of utility become those of toxicity, saturation and survival all at once? In condensing more closely around the complex materialities of conditioned air, might we feel air’s changing stakes? *
Paul Litherland Tegan Moore, Citadine Isolation (city girl esters are more sensitive to hydrolysis while city girl ethers are more sensitive to oxidation) , 2024. Salvaged polyurethane insulation, repurposed diffusion acrylic, off- cut walnut, beeswax, olive oil.
Tegan Moore
Construction site where I collected fragments of spray foam that had been shed from a condo building.
TEGAN MOORE is an artist living in Montreal. She is also part of a plastic pollution research group called The Synthetic Collective, which includes scientists, artists, art historians, philosophers, and writers. https://teganmoore.com/ https://syntheticcollective.org/
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on site review 48 :: building materials
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