Isolation House

Isolation House

After Macalester announced the switch to remote teaching and learning, I made the incredibly difficult decision to drive 15 hours from St. Paul, Minnesota to Knoxville, Tennessee. Although I wanted to stay in Minnesota, and within arm's reach of campus, I was concerned that I would not see my family for several weeks or even months if I didn't make the move. Like others I know in academia, I am in a long-distance relationship. My husband, Conor, lives in Tennessee, where he is working on an MFA in Printmaking. While I continue to teach remotely and meet with my wonderful Mac colleagues over Zoom, I'm readjusting to living with my spouse and in a very different part of the country. As we've been sheltering in place, Conor has begun tracking our movements both within and outside of the house. This is a part of his current art practice, since he cannot access the print studios and presses at the University of Tennessee. This image also reflects some of the work I've been doing with my students since they and I began keeping data diaries from home. We've inevitably been looking inwards, and self-tracking to a greater extent than usual. In this image, you can see the outline that Conor drew of our < 800 square-foot home in Knoxville. The individual colors and lines represent our movements as well as the movement of our cat and dog.

Aisling Quigley

04-10-2020

Aisling Quigley is the DLA Postdoctoral Fellow at Macalester