The History of the Installation 6
After B.L. constructed a room inside a room made entirely of salt, he lead a goat into his house and watched him lick it to stubs and pools. The goat died, of course, of sodium poisoning and dehydration. B.L lay the goat’s corpse on its side and cut a slit into its belly. Expecting the goat’s entrails to fall through the slit, expecting the blood to pour, B.L. was shocked to discover nothing inside the goat at all – an empty carcass, and dry. He reached his hand into the cavern of the goat’s torso, feeling for organs, something, and pulled out only a crystal, pure salt. B.L. now sliced the goat’s body straight in half, and set one half on the floor, it’s empty and marvelous insides facing out. This he turned into a dollhouse for his daughter,
then 4. Her dolls lived inside the goat, sitting on little chairs that B.L. fashioned out of shells glued to sticks. The dolls slept on beds made of abandoned hummingbird nests. There’s some debate about what constitutes an installation as opposed to a sculpture. Certainly for B.L’s little girl, the goat’s body was “installation,” though for her dolls it was only a hotel.