MONICA DUNCAN

The middle class home at the turn of the century includes numerous technological devices with which Americans developed strange relationships. As if trying to coax the phantom phenomenal specter from the mechanisms, surfaces, and wirings of the parlor piano, the living room radio, Kodak Brownie cameras, door hinges, and table tops, 19th/20th century American lifestyle cultivated a repertoire of gestures and sounds that transcend pure object-hood. Via psychoanalytic experiments with hysterics, human radio antennae, and vibration therapy, Rochester Knocking conjures the spirit of the silent film star, Louise Brooks, in order to lead a vaudevillian tour of real and imagined historical homes.