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Current Projects


Disaster Furniture ShowRoom

Disaster Furniture Showroom is real store that sells real disaster inspired furniture that responds to our most intimate ideas about disaster and the future.  Audience members will be invited into the store and encounter salesmen actors that lead them through a performative experience of the objects in the store. This will be an interactive performance that asks audience members to examine their own fears, and what they might do to confront, quell, or resolve them. The project questions how safety, preparedness, and disaster capitalism manifest in the social consciousness. Are we heroes in our fantasies about the future? What motivates people to prepare for the future? How does this fear contribute or impede our ability to take action against climate change and structural violence. PROJECT WEBSITE


Old Man, Dance

Old Man, Dance Work In Progress. In April 2019 I enlisted 5 white men over the age of 65, all of whom are not performers, to explore white male performances of power. We entered into an agreement to subvert the white male gaze, by instead placing my queer gaze onto their bodies. I am curious to explore my impulses towards them - to not distance myself from white men no matter how bad I want to, but instead explore the possibilities of directing them into shapes that might be loving, healing, productive, or cathartic. So far, it’s impossible for them to make the right shape but there has been something very meaningful in watching their bodies be of service and up against impossible odds.


FutureHELLNOW

FureHellNow is part of an ongoing inquiry into American ideas of disaster and the future. Sometimes I refer to this part of my practice as my Survival Series. FutureHellNow is both an installation and a performance space where I have constructed a potential domestic reality that integrates the less visible but ever present alarm and panic that is perpetual inside me/us. In this project I am exploring the neurological processes triggered in emergency survival scenarios and clumsily playing with how to apply them to slow motion disasters of global and historical proportions. During gallery hours audience members will find a note on the nightstand that reads: “Welcome to FutureHellNow, Please come inside and explore the space. No shoes on the bed, but if you take them off you are welcome under the covers. I have left some reading material for you on the nightstand and some ear plugs if you need to nap".

 

PAST  P R O J E C T s


ArTISTS IN PRESIDENTS

Artists-in-Presidents: calls on artists, public intellectuals, performers, and writers to create audio addresses to our nation(s) and relations; together they compose a rousing collection of imaginative proposals for the leadership we need now. Audio addresses and presidential portraits were from over 70 artists were released in 2020 thru 2021. Visit the project website (artistsinpresidents.com) to view the virtual gallery of artist contributions and subscribe to Artists-In-Presidents Podcast wherever you listen to your podcast to listen to the artist addresses.

 

THE BOATEL

2011 Interactive/performative installation moored outside of New York City in Jamaica Bay Queens. A floating hotel and performance space. This piece was a part of the Sea Worthy Exhibition curated by Flux Factory in New York City. It was an arts space made of refurbished salvaged vessels that hosted residents and art-goers for overnight visits, performances and movie screenings. This piece provided a space for New Yorkers to escape to a wilderness found within the urban landscape. The Boatel was a space for communion, observation, nightly performances that engaged the audience to think about the significance of the water and what it means to have an identity that integrates the waterfront. The Boatel hosted a nightly lecture calling upon storytellers, nautical enthusiasts, and city planners working on NY 2020 vision for the NYC waterfront. Over the course of 3 months the Boatel hosted over 5000 people.

 

ALL THESE DARLINGS AND NOW US

2014. Interactive/performative installation in the San Francisco Bay. This is a collection of images of a floating peepshow anchored in the San Francisco Bay comprise of 4 sailboats built into performance spaces for drag and sex shows. Supported by Southern Exposure, I curated and organized more than 25 performance artists, strippers, and drag queens, from two recently shuttered iconic queer businesses, The Lusty Lady and Esta Noche. Each of the performers were invited to create their own performances that took place inside the hulls of each sailboat. Audience members were shuttled in small inflatable boats from shore to the flotilla and viewed the performances through a porthole that was built into each of the boat entrances. I brought in 5 boat captains to host more than 1000 people aboard their boats turned floating stage over the course of 4 nights.

 

PREPARE TO BE UNPREPARED

2016. Interactive/Performative installation in a historic army barrack at Headland’s Center for the Arts. This is an installation shot of the Survival Series piece. It was an immersive performance and installation that inhabited a historic dormitory for soldiers training for WWI and II at Headlands Center for the Arts. For 6 weeks, I lay in bed in this room and spoke with hundreds of visitors about their closely-held interpretations of survival and our country’s future. From these conversations I developed a philosophy on which to base my own personal survival kit. My personal survival kit was held within a handmade boat that I bent out of birch. It is fully functional and floats. I made a lid for the boat so that it could hold my survival belongings and so that it could be transformed into my coffin. It is a life and death boat. Over my 6-week stay at the Headlands, I interviewed and documented 8 different survivalists about their survival kits or emergency bags. Among them were a doomsday prepper, a primitive survivalist, and a red cross volunteer. From these conversations I took notes on the huge whiteboards mounted around the room and then made large format posters documenting the objects in each of their survival kits. I closed the exhibition with a cinematic lecture exploring the things I had learned from people during my stay.

 

THE NOISE CRUISE

2017. A performative installation of an underground noise scene reimagined on a luxury yacht. This project was produced with The Lab and Untitled Art Fair and highlights the ongoing displacement of artists and cultural spaces by bringing audiences to a floating, itinerant version of an underground club. I curated a number of feminist and queer experimental artist with deep ties to the Bay Area: Dynasty Handbag, Kevin Blechdom, Las Sucias, Voice Handler and MSHR. The project hosted an audience of 800 over 4 nights.

 

YOU MAKE A BETTER WALL THAN A WINDOW: THE BILLBOARD

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2015. This is a floating advertisement that I designed and floated along the shores of the Oakland Estuary in the Port of Oakland. It is a sign that advertises an open letter addressed to the Port of Oakland. “You make a better wall than a window,” is what my dad used to say to me what I was stood in between him and the TV as a kid. I am now saying this to the Port of Oakland. The letter questions the Ports decisions to sell public land to private condo developers and presents a discussion about a long game for our waterfronts, one with the legacy of the human race in mind. It includes examples of contemporary waterfront developments from all over the world. In the coming year an Augmented Reality component is to be added to the project that will allow people to see what their waterfront has looked like in the past and what it will look like in the future. On the project website, I caution city trustees, “Don’t continue to be a wall between the people of this city and their waterfront; become a true port, a point of access, an organization with relevant and democratic vision.” The letter can be read at: www.youmakeabetterwallthanawindow.com

 

YOU MAKE A BETTER WALL THAN A WINDOW: THE TOUR

An audio tour performance piece by Hockaday aboard a San Francisco Bay Ferry that was broadcasted live from the front of the boat's upper deck to be delivered in real time to our headsets. This piece was described by the East Bay Express as "A metaphorical and literal correlation between possibility and being in bodies of water ... You Make a Better Wall Than a Window manifested as a kind of research-based poetry reading rather than a spectacle. As we passed underneath the Bay Bridge, Hockaday captained an informational voyage, reconceptualizing the water as 'fast moving land' that, considering the flexibility of maritime law, can function as a loophole in the way society organizes space and the way capitalism and convention determine the limitations of our lives. 'No one can own the water,' she said. The simple reminder was dramatically emphasized by the overwhelming vastness of the bay" -East Bay Express

 

About

 

Constance Hockaday creates public art social sculptures that confront issues surrounding public space, political voice, and belonging. AND in a parallel dimension she also works as an Organizational Development practitioner with scaling companies, implementing tools and practices that ensure people and culture stay aligned during transformative periods of growth.  This unlikely career pairing can be traced back to an extraordinary encounter as a young adult with the Floating Neutrinos, a family of psycho-spiritual artists who sailed around the world in handmade vessels. From them she learned that she could have whatever she wanted in this life including two simultaneous careers in distantly adjacent subjects.  In 2011 she created a floating boat hotel in New York City in hopes of connecting New Yorkers to the public waterways— attracting 5000+ visitors, international press and critical acclaim. The New York Times described her 2014 piece All These Darlings and Now Us as a “powerful commentary on the forces of technification and gentrification roiling San Francisco.”  In 2020 Hockaday launched Artists-In-Presidents which brought together 50+ artists to address the nation alongside the 2020 Presidential Campaign. And, currently she is creating Disaster Furniture Showroom, a project staged in a furniture store that responds to our most intimate ideas about disaster and Climate Change. Hockaday holds an MFA in Social Practice and MA in Conflict Resolution. Her work has been supported by Map Fund, YBCA, Mills College Art Museum, Parrish Art Museum, The Untitled Art Fair, and Flux Factory. She has been in residence at Headlands Center of the Arts (2016-17), Robert Rauschenberg Residency (2018), UCLA Center for the Art of Performance, and The Blackwood Gallery at the Univeristy of Toronto (2021). She is a Senior TED Fellow and is currently the Director of Organizational and Leadership Development at findhelp. 

PRESS

 

Hyperallergic | Sarah Burke | A Floating Noise and Drag Club | January 19, 2017

Interview Magazine | Antwaun Sargent | All Aboard | January 13, 2017

KQED | Sam Lefebvre | Nautical Noise: Yachting Against Cultural Displacement? | January 16, 2017

East Bay Express | Sarah Burke | Oceanic Aspirations | December 16th, 2015

Art 21 Magazine | Jayna Swartzman-Brosky | By Invitation Only | July 27, 2015

Fast Company | Adele Peters | To Solve Gentrification Put Everyone on a Boat Until They figure it Out | October 7, 2014

The New York Times | Melena Ryzik | To the Sea in Ships as Naughty as Ever | June 20, 2014

The New York Times | Melena Ryzik | Check In, Swim Out: A Floating Hotel as Art | July 10, 2011

NPR | John Kalish | A Floating Hotel at the Edge of the City | July 25, 2011

The Guardian | Boat hotel at Rockaway Beach, New York | Jane Mulkerrins

CBS New York | Eye On New York : Boggsville Boatel And Boat-In Theater | July 31, 2011

El Pais | Camarote con vistas al gueto | Barbara Celis

inhabitat | Jessica Dailey | Boggsville Boatel Turns Defunct Boats into Floating Hotels for NYC | August 21, 2011

The Wave | Miriam Rosenberg | Boatel: A Little Bit of Heaven in Rockaway | August 19, 211

All That We’ve Met | Constance Hockaday Invokes Her Inner Neutrino | Pauline Pechin

Lunar Camel Co. | at the Boggsville Boatel | August 06, 2011

Nathan Kensinger Photographer | Sleeping in the Sommerville Basin | July 31, 2011

offManhattan | Amanda Coen | A Boatel and Floating Theater Drop Anchor in Far Rockaway | July 26, 2011

Gothamist | Jamie Feldmar | We Visit The Floating Boatel In The Rockaways, And Chat With The Creator | August 01, 2011

treehugger | Kimberley Mok | Old Boat Hotel & Floating Art Installation in NYC | August 23, 2011

Urban Daddy | Dock Hollywood, A Floating Movie Theater in Far Rockaway | July 18, 2011

Velvet Park | Grace Moon | Constance Hockaday’s Boggsville Boatel | August 20, 2011

What Possessed Me | Last Gasp at the Boggsville Boatel | September 06, 2011

Village Voice | Willis Plummer | The Boggsville Boatel, a Boat Hotel and Art Project, is Completely Booked for the Summer | July 12, 2011

Curbed NY | Kelsey Keith | Inside Look at The Boatel’s Floating Nirvana in Far Rockaway | August 02, 2011

HyperAllergic | Jullian Steinhauer | An Adventure at Best, An Art Project at Worst | August 26, 2011

The New York Times | Melena Ryzik and Channon Hodge | If You Build It | July 10, 2011

The New York Times | Yaa Paskova | Water Suites | July 11, 2011

All Voices | Shaziakhan | Cabin Overlooking the Ghetto | August 17, 2011