Motel Polytope
2010
The motel room is a space of tourism, fantasy, criminality and transience, allowing temporary occupation that, since its development in the 1950s has increasingly occupied the landscape with its varying architectures. The Motel Polytope project is based on a series of interventions staged in Hollywood motels during the course of a week’s tourism. The interventions take the form of paint applications performed directly onto the rooms during a night’s occupation. The work draws upon the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis, who developed a highly unique approach to music composition, often uniting mathematics with musical ideas. Considering the motel room, the project playfully inserts additional geometries to the existing spaces, appropriating their often-uniform look for distributing more personalized modifications.
Vista Motel
4900 Sepulveda Blvd
Room 219
green dots, across furniture and corners
Saharan Motor Hotel
7212 Sunset Blvd
Room 116
yellow highlight
Ramada Marina del Rey
3130 Washington Blvd
Room 215
white and blue diagonals, softly finding a new movement
Hollywood Guest Inn
6700 West Sunset Blvd.
Room 232
orange diagonals, improvised
Hollywood Inn Express North
5131 Hollywood Blvd
Room 125
vertical lines each parallel to a corner – to make a second shadow
Hollywood 7 Star Motel
1730 North La Brea Avenue
Room 216
blue and pink dots, as an overlay onto the wallpaper of roses
Hollywood Downtowner Inn
5601 Hollywood Blvd
Room 27
wrapping the room with grey dots, like a decorative crown
Installation at g727, Los Angeles (as part of Surface Tension_Los Angeles): a series of models, each depicting one of the motel rooms, and the interventions performed. Placed on painted tables with text and images.
