Carrie Hott’s site-specific installation opens to the public

March 20, 2016, kicking off Headlands’ tribute to National Park Service Centennial

Open to the public: from March 20, 2016, Sunday–Thursday, noon‒5 pm

Sausalito, CA …Headlands Center for the Arts announces the opening on March 20, 2016, of a new commission by Carrie Hott in its historic, artist-renovated campus. The Key Room is a multifaceted multi-media project that serves as both a permanent art installation and visitor resource center in Headlands’ main building. The Key Room also serves as Headlands’ programmatic kick-off celebration of the centennial of the National Park Service (NPS). Headlands is sited in Fort Barry, a former army post constructed in 1908, in NPS’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Hott, who has been developing The Key Room since 2014, incorporates extensive research on the history of the Marin Headlands. The histories include: the Portuguese immigrant dairy farmers who lived in the area through the 19th century; military personnel stationed to defend the area spanning from the time of the Civil War to Cold War-era missiles; citizen activists who stopped a land development project and paved the way for the NPS to acquire the property in 1972, and invite several mission-based nonprofits to become park partners; and the visionary artists and thought-leaders who established Headlands Center for the Arts in 1982, and ensured its success.

Installed in a small room with a single window, The Key Room is a complex matrix of stories told through images, text, sound, and video. Components of Hott’s installation include: original visual imagery made by Hott; video stations of images from both Headlands’ and NPS’ archives and footage of the site; a shelf of objects from the Center’s own material history; and a bank of phones playing prerecorded audio tracks, sounds, and interviews with key players in the Marin Headlands’ history (artists, former land inhabitants, military personnel, and Park Rangers, to name a few).

The more than twenty recorded tracks include accounts from the foundational artists and architects who transformed Headlands into the incubator of creativity it is today, as well as tracks from more recent alumni of Headlands’ artist residency programs. The recordings provide perspectives on everything from local history, geology, and ghosts to nature, wildlife, and architecture. Hott also invited artists to contribute interpretive materials to the installation in the form of self-guided walking tour pamphlets. Additionally, The Key Room provides timely information regarding the Center, including a roster of current Artists in Residence. Throughout, The Key Room’s elements blend the past and present—and, at times, the real and fictional—to form a unique and evocative interpretation of place.

To celebrate the opening of The Key Room, Headlands will host a day of free programming on March 20, 2016, from noon to 5 pm. The launch event will extrapolate on a handful of The Key Room’s central themes through interactive activities and storytelling by Holly Blake (staff, 1988–present), Phoebe Brookbank (Artist in Residence ’88), Sarah Fran Wisby (Artist in Residence ’14), Mark Thompson (Artist in Residence ’86), and others. Additionally, a display of over 600 objects from Headlands’ history will be on view, and the Mess Hall Café will be open all day. 

http://www.headlands.org/the-key-room

About Carrie Hott

Carrie Hott is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California. She has presented her work as part of exhibitions and projects across the country, most recently at Interface Gallery, Southern Exposure, and the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History in the Bay Area, as well as in public programs at the Oakland Museum of California and the International Symposium on Electronic Arts in New Mexico. In 2015, Hott was named one of 24 Artists to Watch around the world by BLOUIN ARTINFO and Modern Painters Magazine. Her work has been reviewed in Art Practical, Artslant, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. In addition to her installation-based material practice, Hott regularly completes related projects that include performances, tours, and various collaborative endeavors. In 2009, with artist Elizabeth Bernstein, she co-founded the Royal NoneSuch Gallery in Oakland, an alternative art and community event space. In 2013, she co-founded a long-distance collaborative space in Queens, New York, called Ortega y Gasset Projects. Hott received her BFA from Arizona State University in 2003, and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007.

About Headlands Commissions Program

Since its founding over 30 years ago, Headlands Center for the Arts has commissioned artists to creatively rehabilitate and repurpose access to and use of its historic site. To date, Headlands has commissioned site rehabilitation projects including: David Ireland’s Rodeo Room and Eastwing (1986); Bruce Tomb and John Randolph’s The Latrine (1988); Ann Hamilton’s Mess Hall (1989); Leonard Hunter and Mark Cavagnero’s Building 960 (1999); and Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine’s Reverse Ark Victory Garden (2008). Building on this legacy, of which The Key Room is now a part, Headlands Commissions Program seeks out artists who engage with cultural history both local and global, and directly supports the development of new and important projects in this arena. These projects—that also include publications, presentations, installations, and exhibitions—invite audiences to re-imagine our cultural landscape through the creative reinterpretation of places, objects, and historical narratives.

About Headlands Center for the Arts

Headlands Center for the Arts is a multidisciplinary, international arts center located in the Marin Headlands and is a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Headlands’ Artists Programs provide opportunities for research, experimentation, professional development, and peer-to-peer exchange for artists working across disciplines at critical times in their careers. Unique among programs for artists, Headlands’ dynamic residency program provides meaningful resources—time, space, community, and financial support—to artists who are engaged in catalyzing new modes of thought, work, and discourse. By bringing together artists from a wide range of disciplines—visual and interdisciplinary arts, architecture, performance and dance, music and sound, writing, criticism, and curating—the programs emphasize a balance in developing an individual practice, a valuable exchange with other artists and visitors, and a meaningful engagement with place. www.headlands.org

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