What's this? This is an unbiased just-the-facts news timeline ('newsline') about Jon Kessler, created by Newslines contributors. Become a contributor

Jon Kessler

Jon Kessler2 posts
Latest News view > Click for Biography view
2 Sep, 2014

Starts carrying mattress

Makes Statement0 Comments

After seeking guidance from visual arts professor Kessler over the summer, Sulkowicz starts carrying her mattress wherever she goes on Campus.

Rape can happen anywhere. I was raped in my own dorm bed, and since then that’s become fraught for me. And I feel like I carry the weight of what happened there with me everywhere…For my senior thesis I will be doing a piece called ‘Mattress Performance’ or “Carry that Weight’ where I will be carrying this dorm room mattress everywhere I go for as long as I attend the same school as my rapist.

Kessler:

Carrying around your university bed—which was also the site of your rape—is an amazingly significant and poignant and powerful symbol. I felt I had something to offer in terms of how artists have done endurance performance pieces in the past, and the connection between activism and performance…The best art comes from a very personal place and from personal commitment and belief—otherwise you’re just doing an assignment…As a physical metaphor, the piece has tremendous power.

Emma Sulkowicz: "Carry That Weight"