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Mattress Performance
(Carry That Weight)
photograph
Emma Sulkowicz (center right) with Mattress Performance at her graduation, 19 May 2015
ArtistEmma Sulkowicz
YearSeptember 2014 – May 2015
TypePerformance art, endurance art[1]
LocationColumbia University, Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was a work of endurance performance art by Emma Sulkowicz, conducted as her senior thesis during the final year of her visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York.[1] Begun in September 2014, the piece involved Sulkowicz carrying a 50-lb mattress – of the kind Columbia uses in its dorms – wherever she went on campus. She said the piece would end when a student she alleges raped her in her dorm room in 2012 was expelled from or otherwise left the university.[2] Sulkowicz carried the mattress until May 2015 when both students graduated. Several women helped her carry it to the graduation ceremony.[3]

The accused student, who was found "not responsible" in 2013 by a university inquiry into the allegations, called Sulkowicz's version of events "untrue and unfounded" and Mattress Performance an act of bullying.[4] Sulkowicz filed a police complaint in May 2014; according to the accused's lawyer, the district attorney's office said no charges would be brought because of a "lack of reasonable suspicion." In April 2015 the accused filed a lawsuit against the university, its trustees, university president Lee Bollinger, and art professor Jon Kessler, Sulkowicz's thesis supervisor, alleging that they exposed him to gender-based harassment by allowing Mattress Performance to take place on campus as part of Sulkowicz's course.[5]

The art world responded to the work with enthusiasm. Art critic Jerry Saltz called Mattress Performance "pure radical vulnerability" and one of the best art shows of 2014.[6] Journalist Emily Bazelon described the work and events surrounding it as "an increasingly bitter fight over truth and narrative," a triumph for the campus anti-rape movement and a nightmare for the accused. Caught between defending Sulkowicz's freedom of expression and the accused's right to due process, the university was criticized by both parties and their parents for its handling of the issue.[7] The mattress, housed since May 2015 in Sulkowicz's parents' home, became an icon of a wider civil rights debate about the effect of campus sexual assault on women's equal access to education, and how universities balance the competing rights of the accusers and accused.[7][8]

Background

Sulkowicz, December 2014

Emma Sulkowicz (born 1992)[9] is the daughter of Sandra Leong and Kerry Sulkowicz, psychiatrists from Manhattan. She attended Dalton School on the Upper East Side, where she was a competitive fencer. In 2011 she began her visual arts degree at Columbia University, where she joined the Alpha Delta Phi Society.[10]

Sulkowicz alleges that she was anally raped by another student on the first day of her second year in August 2012, during what began as a consensual sexual encounter in her dorm room. The accused strongly denies the allegation, insisting that the encounter was entirely consensual.[11] Sulkowicz filed a complaint with the university in April 2013, and in October that year a university inquiry found the accused "not responsible."[12]

After hearing about Sulkowicz's allegations, three other students (two women and a man) filed sexual-assault complaints against the same student. The accused said the complaints were the result of collusion. In two cases the university found him "not responsible," and in the third, in which a woman said he had grabbed and tried to kiss her at a party, a verdict of "responsible" was overturned on appeal.[13][14]

The case attracted wider interest when Sulkowicz began speaking out about the general issue of sexual assault on campus, something the Obama administration pledged to address in January 2014 with the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.[15] She appeared with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at a press conference about the issue in April that year and told reporters she had been raped.[16] On 24 April Sulkowicz and 22 other students, later joined by five more, filed a federal complaint against Columbia and Barnard College. The complaint alleged that, in their handling of sexual-assault complaints, the universities were in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972,[17] a law to ensure gender equality in federally funded institutions, and Title II, a provision against discrimination on the basis of disability.[18] The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened investigations into the complaints in January 2015.[19]

On 3 May 2014 Sulkowicz was named and interviewed by the New York Times, and on 14 May filed a complaint about the alleged rape with the NYPD.[20][21] The next day Time magazine published an op-ed by Sulkowicz, and the day after that Columbia's student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, named the accused.[22][21] The district attorney's office interviewed the accused in August and, according to his lawyer, said that no charges would be brought because of a "lack of reasonable suspicion."[5]

Creation and performance

External images

Rules of engagement, Watson Hall
Sulkowicz with mattress on campus
October 2014

Sulkowicz created Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) in the summer of 2014 for her senior thesis while at Yale University Summer School of Art and Music. Her first effort was a video of herself moving a bed out of a room, accompanied by the audio of her filing the police report, which she had recorded on her cellphone.[23] The mattress later became the focus of the piece.[24] Sulkowicz's thesis was supervised by artist Jon Kessler, a professor at Columbia. As the idea for Mattress Performance developed, Kessler and Sulkowicz discussed the nature of endurance art and the work of Tehching Hsieh, Marina Abramović, Ulay and Chris Burden.[25]

Purchased online from Tall Paul's Tall Mall, the 50-lb (23-kg), dark-blue, extra-long twin mattress is of the kind Columbia places in its dorms, similar to the one on which Sulkowicz alleges she was attacked.[23][10] She spent the summer of 2014 creating the rules of engagement. Written on the walls of her studio in the university's Watson Hall, these stated that she had to carry the mattress when on university property; that it had to remain on campus when Sulkowicz was not there; and that she was not allowed to ask for help in carrying it, but if help was offered she was allowed to accept.[23][26]

In early September that year she began carrying the mattress on campus.[27] A homeless man was one of the first to help. She told New York Magazine: "He was the first person who helped without some sort of preconstructed belief for why they were going to help. He was like, 'Oh, look, a struggling girl – let me help her and be a nice human being.' That was probably the most honest interaction I had."[28] She kept a diary throughout, amounting to 59,000 words at the end of the work, recording her experiences and the misunderstandings of commentators.[28]

Sulkowicz said the work would end when the accused was expelled from or otherwise left Columbia, and that she would take the mattress to her graduation ceremony if necessary.[24][10] In the end she did carry it to her (and the accused's) graduation day on 19 May 2015, despite a request from Columbia that students should not bring "large objects which could interfere with the proceedings."[3] Several women carried the mattress on stage. As they approached, university president Lee Bollinger, who had been shaking other graduates' hands, turned away as if to pick something up, and did not shake their hands; the university said this happened only because the mattress was in the way.[7] The next day posters appeared in Morningside Heights near the university calling Sulkowicz a "pretty little liar."[29]

After graduation Sulkowicz said she had known the university would not expel the accused, and had expected to carry the mattress for nine months, the length of a pregnancy, which was an important part of the work: "To me, the piece has very much represented [the fact that] a guy did a horrible thing to me and I tried to make something beautiful out of it."[28]

Reception

Accused and his parents, lawsuit

Emily Bazelon called Mattress Performance a nightmare for the accused student.[7] He described the work as harassment "explicitly designed to bully" him into leaving Columbia.[30] He was shunned by other students, had his personal details and photograph posted online, along with threats, and his name was listed as a serial rapist on campus bathroom walls and flyers.[7] On the National Day of Action in November 2014 protestors took mattresses to one of his classes.[11]

In April 2015 the accused filed a lawsuit against the university, its board of trustees, university president Lee Bollinger, and Sulkowicz's senior-thesis supervisor, Jon Kessler, alleging that they exposed him to gender-based harassment and a hostile educational environment in allowing the project to go ahead. He maintains that in so doing they damaged his college experience, emotional well-being, reputation and career prospects.[5] Attorney Nicholas O'Donnell wrote in Art Law Report that the pleading raised eyebrows regarding the alleged sexual details included about Sulkowicz, when the lawsuit is about the university, not about the sexual allegations.[31] The case will be heard by Judge Gregory H. Woods of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The accused is represented by Andrew Miltenberg and the university by Roberta A. Kaplan.[5]

The accused's parents criticized the university, including its decision to let Sulkowicz take the mattress to the graduation ceremony: "This has been a deeply humiliating experience. ... A university that bows to a public witch-hunt no longer deserves to be called a place of enlightenment, of intellectual and academic freedom."[32][33] They also criticized a campus art display, held the week before graduation, in which Sulkowicz exhibited drawings of a naked man, a couple having sex, and newspaper articles about the accused.[7] It was later shown, titled Newspaper Bodies (Look, Mom, I'm on the Front Page!), as part of a group exhibition at a local gallery.[28]

Other responses

The art world responded with enthusiasm to Mattress Performance. Artnet cited it as "almost certainly ... one of the most important artworks of the year," comparing it to Ana Mendieta's Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) and Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus's Three Weeks in May (1977).[34] Performance artist Marina Abramović praised it.[35] New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described it as "strict and lean, yet inclusive and open ended, symbolically laden yet drastically physical," writing that comparisons to the Stations of the Cross and Hester Prynne's scarlet letter were apparent.[24] Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York Magazine, included it in his list of the best 19 art shows of 2014, calling "clear, to the point, insistent, adamant ... pure radical vulnerability."[6]

The political response was marked too. Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time, said he could not think of another case where art had triggered a movement in the way Mattress Performance had.[36] Hillary Clinton told the DNC Women's Leadership Forum in September 2014: "That image should haunt all of us ..."[37] In October Columbia students carried 28 mattresses on campus, one for each student who joined the federal Title IX complaint, then left them outside the university president's home; they were fined $471 for the clean-up.[36][38] A month later a group called "Carry That Weight" organized a "National Day of Action to Carry That Weight," during which students carried mattresses on 130 US campuses and several elsewhere.[39][40] Sulkowicz received the National Organization for Women's Susan B. Anthony Award and the Feminist Majority Foundation's Ms. Wonder Award.[41]

In January 2015 Senator Gillibrand invited Sulkowicz to attend the 2015 State of the Union Address.[4] Families Advocating for Campus Equality said the invitation was "undeserved and violates the principles of confidentiality and gender equality of Title IX," and that Sulkowicz had "failed to establish any wrongdoing" on the part of the accused.[42]

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol

In June 2015 Sulkowicz released an eight-minute video performance art piece, of herself having sex with an anonymous actor in her Columbia dorm room. Entitled Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ("This is not a rape"), after "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" from René Magritte's The Treachery of Images, the video was directed by artist Ted Lawson and appeared to be a reenactment of the rape allegation. Sulkowicz was put in contact with Lawson by performance artist Marina Abramović.[43][44]

The scene is shown from four angles on a split screen, each of which displays the timestamp of 27 August 2012, the night of the alleged assault. Lawson said it was filmed this way, during the previous winter break, to create a sense of watching through security cameras.[45] Introductory text by Sulkowicz stresses that the sex was consensual throughout, though toward the end it appears not to be. She wrote of the video that it was not a reenactment of the rape allegation: "Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol is not about one night in August, 2012. It's about your decisions, starting now. It's only a reenactment if you disregard my words. It's about you, not him."[43][46]

References

  1. ^ a b For "endurance performance art," Emma Sulkowicz (2 September 2014). "Emma Sulkowicz: "Carry That Weight", Columbia Daily Spectator, 2:22 mins.
  2. ^ Soraya Nadia McDonald (29 October 2014). "It's hard to ignore a woman toting a mattress everywhere she goes, which is why Emma Sulkowicz is still doing it". The Washington Post.
  3. ^ a b Kate Taylor (20 May 2015). "Mattress Protest at Columbia University Continues Into Graduation Event", The New York Times.
  4. ^ a b Katie Van Syckle (20 January 2015). "Alleged Columbia Rapist ‘Dismayed and Disappointed’ by Accuser’s SOTU Invitation", New York Magazine; Katie Van Syckle (21 January 2015). "Emma Sulkowicz Was ‘Let Down’ by Obama SOTU Speech", New York Magazine.
  5. ^ a b c d Max Kutner, "The Anti-Mattress Protest", Newsweek, 28 April 2015; Case details, PaceMonitor.com.
  6. ^ a b Jerry Saltz (10 December 2014). "The 19 Best Art Shows of 2014". New York Magazine.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Emily Bazelon (29 May 2015). "Have We Learned Anything From the Columbia Rape Case?", The New York Times Magazine.
  8. ^ Sonja Sharp (14 May 2015). "How Campus Rape Became a National Scandal", Vice.
  9. ^ "Carry That Weight", Emma Sulkowicz interviewed by Roberta Smith, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, December 2014 (hereafter Smith 2014), c. 48:50 mins.
  10. ^ a b c Vanessa Grigoriadis (21 September 2014). "Meet the College Women Who Are Starting a Revolution Against Campus Sexual Assault", New York Magazine.
  11. ^ a b Ariel Kaminer (22 December 2014). "Accusers and the Accused, Crossing Paths at Columbia University". The New York Times.
  12. ^ Cathy Young (3 February 2015). "Columbia Student: I Didn't Rape Her", The Daily Beast.
  13. ^ Cathy Young (20 May 2015). "As Another Accusation Bites the Dust, Columbia Rape Saga Takes New Turn", reason.com.
  14. ^ Anonymous (21 May 2015). "I Am Not a 'Pretty Little Liar'", Jezebel.
  15. ^ Alexandra Hunnings (5 September 2014). "'My rapist is still on campus' – one woman's fight to be heard", CBC; "Not Alone: The First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault", White House, April 2014.
  16. ^ "Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Seeks Funds To Fight College Campus Sex Assaults", CBS New York, 7 April 2014.
  17. ^ "Equal Access to Education: Forty Years of Title IX", United States Department of Justice, 23 June 2012.
  18. ^ Emma Bogler (24 April 2014). "Students file federal complaint against Columbia, alleging Title IX, Title II, Clery Act violations", Columbia Spectator.
  19. ^ Tyler Kingkade (12 January 2015). "Columbia University Is Under Federal Investigation For Sexual Assault Cases". The Huffington Post.
  20. ^ Richard Pérez-Peña, Kath Taylor (3 May 2014). "Fight Against Sexual Assaults Holds Colleges to Account", The New York Times.
  21. ^ a b Emma Bogler (16 May 2014). "Frustrated by Columbia's inaction, student reports sexual assault to police". Columbia Spectator.
  22. ^ Emma Sulkowicz (15 May 2014), "‘My Rapist Is Still on Campus’", Time magazine.
  23. ^ a b c Smith 2014, c. 38:50 mins.
  24. ^ a b c Roberta Smith (22 September 2014). "In a Mattress, a Lever for Art and Political Protest", The New York Times.
  25. ^ Jillian Steinhauer (17 September 2014). "Two Weeks Into Performance, Columbia Student Discusses the Weight of Her Mattress", Hyperallergic; "Jon Kessler", Columbia University School of the Arts.
  26. ^ For Watson Hall, Sulkowitzc, 2 September 2014, from c. 2:00 mins.
  27. ^ Noel Duan (9 September 2014). "Going From Class to Class With Emma Sulkowicz and Her Mattress", Elle.
  28. ^ a b c d Andy Battaglia (28 May 2015). "Will Emma Sulkowicz’s Protest Mattress Wind Up in a Museum?", New York Magazine.
  29. ^ Jessica Roy (20 May 2015); "Posters Around Columbia Campus Call Emma Sulkowicz a ‘Pretty Little Liar’", New York Magazine, 20 May 2015.
  30. ^ Sarah Kaplan (4 February 2015). "In Columbia University rape case, accuser and accused are now fighting it out in public", The Washington Post.
  31. ^ Nicholas O'Donnell (4 May 2015). "The Mattress Performance” Spawns Lawsuit That Raises Some Eyebrows About Pleading Style", Art Law Report.
  32. ^ Katie Van Syckle (20 May 2015). "Accused Rapist’s Parents Criticize Columbia for Allowing Mattress at Graduation",New York Magazine.
  33. ^ Rudi Novotny (2 June 2015). "What Happened on the Mattress?", Zeit.
  34. ^ Ben Davis (4 September 2014). "Columbia Student's Striking Mattress Performance". Artnet.
  35. ^ Josh Niland (27 October 2014). "Marina Abramović is Down With Emma Sulkowicz's Mattress Piece", Artnet]].
  36. ^ a b Sarah Kaplan (28 November 2014). "How a mattress became a symbol for student activists against sexual assault", The Washington Post.
  37. ^ "Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", Democratic National Committee Women's Leadership Forum, 19 September 2014.
  38. ^ Rebecca Nathanson (1 December 2014). "How 'Carry That Weight' Is Changing the Conversation on Campus Sexual Assault", Rolling Stone.
  39. ^ Alexandra Svokos (29 October 2014). "Students Bring Out Mattresses In Huge 'Carry That Weight' Protest Against Sexual Assault". Huffington Post.
  40. ^ Gander Kashmira (13 November 2014). "University 'charges students hundreds of dollars' to clean up mattresses from Emma Sulkowicz anti-sexual assault solidarity protest", The Independent.
  41. ^ "Meet Our 2014 Honorees". Susan B. Anthony Awards. Retrieved 25 November 2014.; "Ms. Wonder Awards Honor Young Grassroots Leaders in Anti-Violence and Fair Wage Movements". Feminist Newswire. 19 November 2014.
  42. ^ Valerie Richardson (26 January 2015). "Kirsten Gillibrand blasted for decision to invite Columbia ‘mattress girl’ to SOTU", The Washington Times.
  43. ^ a b Cait Munro (4 June 2015). "Emma Sulkowicz Breaks New Ground With Troubling Video Performance", Artnet
  44. ^ Charlotte Alter (5 June 2014). "Student Who Carried Mattress in Rape Protest Unveils New Project", Time magazine.
  45. ^ Teo Armus (5 June 2015). "Sulkowicz films herself in a violent sex scene for newest art project", Columbia Spectator.
  46. ^ Frank, Priscilla (5 June 2015). "'Mattress Performance' Artist Emma Sulkowicz's Newest Work Is A Video Of Violent Sex". Huffington Post. Retrieved 6 June 2015.
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