The Key Room

Permanent Multi Media Installation at Headlands Center for the Arts

Commissioned by Headlands Center for the Arts and completed between 2014-2016

The Key Room website created by Chris Hamamoto.

The Key Room is a permanent multi-media installation that includes sound, video, found objects, and original sculpture at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Created from a process of excavating objects, sounds, and stories from Headlands and the original Archive Room. Acting as a combined art installation, visitor center, and resource room, The Key Room is an interactive experience that ties together past and present and fact and fiction.

"Like a book collection sorted by color, Hott manages to organize and not organize at the same time, creating a system that invokes the futility of all systems. She uses the trappings of a professional archivist-neatly labeled manila tags, a detailed numbering system, fastidious organization-but refuses the professional prerogative. She injects what is usually a sober affair with an impish sense of play. Hott said of this phase of the project that she felt like a "bad" archivist, although her transgression was only to tinker with the strictures of categorization."

from "The Bad Archivist: Carrie Hott's The Key Room" by Sasha Archibald, X-TRA Magazine, Fall 2016