As homes are becoming abandoned and foreclosed at an astonishing rate, suburbs are becoming a new safe haven for squatters and thieves. The “haunted house”, once reserved for homes on the territorial fringe, is making its way rapidly into suburban America. What you can’t see may kill you. The paranoid neighbor(hood).
There is an element present in all good horror/suspense films, an extreme feeling of discomfort and paranoia, something that works subliminally beneath the surface. Psycho, Paranormal Activity, Poltergeist…all of these movies play upon the fear of the unknown. The scariest monsters are the ones you never see, or perhaps only see glimpses of. The feeling of unease, or the uncanny, runs parallel to that of seduction. I’ll just show you a little. A tease. The promise of something is always more poignant than showing it outright. But what about when you finally see what you fear, what you lusted after, can the process be transformative? Can a glimpse of what may seem unsettling metamorphose into beauty?
This project designed by Michael Young focuses on the idea of replacement through mutant form and the misfit condition, not as a means of destruction/construction, but as a process over time, one ofmetamorphosis and transformation, slowly revealing what lies beneath, and by doing so, this transformation affords a different look at the contemporary home and the ontology of the nightmare which is bound with it.
“The house, like a man, can become a skeleton. A superstition is enough to kill it. Then it is terrible.” -Victor Hugo
