The Toilet: Constructing the Physical

Scrape Elegy is a circular structure, built with acoustic panelling on a steel frame. [5] In the centre of the structure is a half-circle with a toilet in the centre, hidden from view. The structure has a partial roof. In a collaborative compromise, to ensure privacy while adhering to fire safety and Occupational Health and Safety standards, the roof has circular holes in the ceiling, reminiscent of old-fashioned telephone dials — a nod to the history of phones before Instagram. The central feature of the work is the pink toilet in the middle of the cubicle. Scrape Elegy joins a long line of absurd toilets in postmodern art. Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain was the first toilet of sorts to be put in a gallery, in 1917, and is credited in Artsy as ‘changing art forever’ (Mann 2017).

Matthew Bown (2019), in ‘Toilets of Our Time: Where Art Meets Defecation’ credits Sarah Lucas for creating the next seminal work, this time a functioning toilet in an empty room, titled The Great Flood, in 1996. This was followed by Gelitin’s Locus Focus in 2004, which Bown describes as ‘a frank exhalation of the act of defecation: as you sit on your throne, a system of mirrors enables you to watch your own live action’ (Bown 2019: 2). Like Locus Focus, Scrape Elegy uses a toilet as a setting, with incorporated technology to create self-reflection as part of its experience. Much like Fountain, which was not connected to plumbing or intended for actual use, Scrape Elegy is a non-functioning toilet. As the toilet concept was introduced very late in the creative process, when Lauren Steller was brought in to do the design, plumbing was not considered and the toilet was simply symbolic, à la Fountain. In fabrication, the toilet bowl holds the wire that connects the iPads and lights to power cables through the floor of the gallery, and it must be stuck shut at all times to prevent damage to the electrical wiring as well as defecation.

Within the sound art world, real public toilets have been used for site-specific works, such as The Gordon Assumption by Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, in 2004. A chorus of female voices rise infinitely in pitch from subterranean toilets situated at a train station, making passers-by concerned for the ‘trapped women’ (Kouvaras 2009: 101). The absence of a toilet, conversely, becomes a moment of terror in Martin Kersel’s 1994 installation work Brown Sound Kit, where a piece of sound equipment that emits low-frequency infrasound waves threatens to cause mass involuntary loss of bowel control (M HKA 2024).

In 2016, Maurizio Cattelan unveiled another functioning toilet, this time in 18-karat gold, titled America, in the Guggenheim. Scrape Elegy mirrors America in its exceptional colour and placement, as well as the mutual criticism of corporate America and the absurdity of the modern capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in. Both toilets, like the public toilets of reality, often result in queues of people in the gallery waiting to use them. In Scrape Elegy, this works as a subversion of Instagram and social media in general, where access and gratification are instant.

In this way, Scrape Elegy is also a subversion of the performative platform of Instagram, a reminder that it is nothing more than an accompaniment to our daily use of the bathroom. As Abigail Cain (2016) found through interviews with viewers, the golden toilet America was, in the end, not much more than a working toilet.

Next section: Subverting Big Tech

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Other chapters:

Curtain Call: Delegated Performance

References

Scrape_Elegy: Introduction to the Work

Methods and Methodology

Social Media: The Basis for Exploration

The Technical: Finding Your Footprint

The Elegy: Creating_the Lament

The Toilet: Constructing the Physical