IKB towel
I produced a small edition of monochrome cotton towels that replicated the exact rgb colour combination for the International Klein Blue (IKB) and then I distributed these, anonymously, throughout various spots along local gay-cruising trails in Calgary. For Yves Klein (1928-62) this particular hue held an architectural quality which he associated with a scene of entering into another world — and I was drawn to how some gay cruisers, at a time when physical restrictions continue to mediate any possibility of intimacy — began to alter their own cruising rituals by recasting their gazes towards the natural environments of these sites, as if these mundane backgrounds were archives that now supplied them with various entry-points to sensations from past experiences of erotic pleasure. When propped as a projection screen, the IKB towel transforms into a frame that furnishes the cruiser’s imagination with a way of re-reading their own presence on these trails as an image that is set adrift, like a living backdrop that meanders, infinitely, without a subject. Here the archive is turned inside out: the archivist assumes the spatial function of its structure, while the archive is animated into something that is alive - a body that gives pleasure.
IKB towel, 2021, 70.07" x 29.13", print on combed cotton with synthetic dyes.
