Sleepyhead is a series of performances and time lapse videos undertaken around the city. Found in the ARC thrift store dumpster, two artificial fur rugs motivated this project. These objects were so charged that the performance began immediately, without even the knowledge of the artist. Carrying what seemed to be some sort of bed from place to place would visibly change the environments traversed, the behavior and attitudes of people there pivoting at the very appearance of a man with two rugs. Without me, Sleepyhead took the stage, a radical individual that insisted on nothingness, on not-doing, not-seeing, on disappearing under the blankets; borderline animal that challenged the citizens of Denver to their very core showed up at parks where no homeless person would dare to take a snooze.
This project is about stigma, whether I would have it any other way. Joggers stared and shoppers were wary at the sight of Sleepyhead struggling with his bed again. At the impasse of life and death, there in the median a man with no purpose, who seems as lazy as he is tired. Mentally ill with nowhere to go? Drug addict with too big a stash? Salty dog? Criminally unpredictable? Consumer of garbage? Nobody knows, we just know that carrying fur rugs around is a crime and ought to be managed, if not by lemon cakes and leftovers, then swiftly by broom and dustpan.
