When one undergoes the interrogation of shop windows, one also pronounces one’s own sentence. In fact, one’s choice is “round trip.” From the demand of shop windows, from the inevitable response to shop windows, the fixation of choice is determined. No obstinacy, ad absurdum, of hiding the coition through a glass pane with one or many objects of the shop windows. The penalty consists in cutting the pane and in gnawing at your thumbs as soon as possession is consummated.
- Marcel Duchamp (emphasis ours)
Window Dressing is a video and sound installation by Amy Ruhl that is accessible at the front exterior window of the Sunview Luncheonette. The work invites visitors to be intimate with the inanimate surfaces at the periphery of the diner, as the window itself carries the sound of the images viewed through a small, low peephole. Drawing from the fantastic worlds of commodity display and fairy tales, Ruhl juxtaposes highly stylized imagery of phantasmagoric and seductive objects with their literal consumption. An extension of her ongoing interdisciplinary project Between Tin Men, Window Dressing plays with themes of fetishism, commodity display, voyeurism and desire. The installation activates the facade of the luncheonette after its long hiatus, while using the interior as a host body for dreamlike projections to entice and repel.
