The queue of transfixed faces behind me stretches further out with every moment that passes. Two stoic figures stand watch, unwavering, their faces devoid of emotion or warmth, their white garments a striking contrast to the ominous rift they guard. They look expensive. I want new clothes too. I WANT NEW CLOTHES! Clothes that make you look like half angel draped in light and half scientist. I want to shoot Abraham in a rocket so far into space, so far that I won’t see him ever again. These gatekeepers must’ve seen Ham before...floating around somewhere.
The watcher invites me forward and says, “Rennid doog a evah!”
The floor beneath me disappears, my feet unknowing where to fall and meet the ground I once walked on. The transcendence from where I left to this new spaceless vacuum lasts but a moment. A peering light calls me forward, offering escape and direction in the void, it beckons my body and my hunger for something to chase. Just as I reach the boundary, the darkness relinquishes its dominion over my corpse, I am released into a boundless landscape but again I am lost…
Wait.
Is this where Ham is?
The world swirls around me. The snow-capped mountains now replaced by water. So much water. The abyss terrifying yet soothing. Deeper and deeper I go. FIRE. I am awake again in a landscape so dry my mouth becomes sandpaper. A table like the one I stand upon in the distance. And another. Another. I blink and a rainbow meets me. A bubble town under the shadows of mountains is invaded by picnic items. Toy soldiers storm the valley, a hot dog crushes a neighborhood… Gummy bears. Yes. There is dinner here. Maybe I am supposed to eat now. Me and my dinner and my dinner table, together. I like my dinner! We are sinking up. Closer and closer until the leg of the table touches the boundary of the sky. And shatters. Everything shatters slowly into a million little pieces. A red fork, then a million pieces of red. Then blue. A spoon. And more. And more, falling like confetti.
Wait.
What is left here? I consider myself as having a booty, a banana, an oreo, a triangular prism, flesh, a face, teeth, and a fork. I think of things like booties, bananas, oreos, triangular prisms, flesh, faces, teeth, and forks. I think of books and I think of tables. I think of snow and water and cowboys. I am! I am! I AM!
Studio 400 is comprised of 18 fifth year architecture thesis students supervised by professor Karen Lange, constructed a surrealist room within the Berg Gallery on the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo, California. The book show, “Limbo,” showcased the studio member’s fall quarter research books, attracting much attention on campus.
Allen Leu Allison Lee Benjamin Clark Chloe Shaheen Jackson Bower Karolina Dohnalkova Katie Moore Kevin Herhusky Madeleine Robertson Maggie Ma Matthew Mattson Nicholas Ultee Nick Rademacher Phillip Harris Rachel Ferry Rodrigo Robles-Gonzalez Valentina Corallo Xiaoyin Xie Yasmine Suleiman