Michael Rakowitz
paraSITE
1998—ongoing
Plastic bags, polyethylene tubing, hooks, tape.Different urban sites in New York City, Boston and Cambridge MA, and Baltimore MD. Exhibited at MoMA (2005), MassMOCA (2004), and elsewhere,Custom built inflatable shelters designed for homeless people that attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure. Built and distributed to over 30 homeless people in Boston and Cambridge, MA and New York City.
"Joe H. using his paraSITE shelter in February 2000. Joe is a homeless man who lived on the streets near Battery Park City in Manhattan. In the 1970s, he became a contractor and was responsible for building over fifteen buildings in Brooklyn. He was diagnosed with cancer in the 1980s after being exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the Air Force in Vietnam. After forty-seven different operations to treat the cancer, the Veteran’s Association of America ceased paying his medical bills and he went bankrupt." http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/parasite
