Progressive Insurance

Ceramic and rubber tubing, 35' x 20 ' overall

This piece is an all-white, 300-piece permanent installation called Connectors, installed at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland, Ohio, its name derived from the company but insinuating social-democratic politics and the interconnectedness of all things, especially plumbing.

This piece can be fitted to many sizes and pieces; a smaller version (see thumbnail) was shown 2005 in the Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI. It is a multiple and can range form three pieces up to several thousand.

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Born in Germany, Barbara Westermann has strong roots in both conceptualist and feminist theory. Hints of both of these philosophical movements can be found in this stunning wall sculpture. For example, a staple device of conceptual artists is to incorporate repeated (or serialized) forms to construct a motif/idea. Serialization has historically been used for a variety of reasons including the critique of commodity culture or to emphasize process. While Westermann's modules reflect these thoughts, they also meld together suggesting an overall single mechanism that appears to have a bizarre function. It is through this suggested utility that feminist politics surface. Through its milky-white vessels and passageways, one wonders what manufactured product becomes the result of this process. What passes through these tubes, and what is created? As it becomes obvious that the structure is ultimately connected to itself (over and over again), a great sense of uniformity and flowing interconnectivity emerges - perhaps a metaphor for the ubiquitous sisterhood that has given life to waves of Feminism since the early days of suffragists. Each unit seemingly relies on another and that one on yet another, creating a fabric of autonomy with a fixed mission of sustainability.

The installation is comprised of 300 uniquely-cast multiple forms, each connected to one another by a complex web of plastic tubing. The cast modules are intended to at once reference both mechanical elements and organic growths; the connecting tubes can be read as the support system that gives life/energy to the entire web. Vacillating between industrial and biological efficacy, Connectors may also make an interesting comment on the hybridization of technology and living organisms - on the advancement of silicon-based life forms. By employing an absolutely clean, almost clinical, surface to all the components, this "spiritual machine" * seems safe, and even beautiful. As such, it calls into question our blind faith that may too often accept the advancement of new technology without scrutiny or debate. What appears on the surface to be pure and clinical may ultimately be dangerous or even lethal.

* A reference to Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines in which the author raises questions about the moral responsibility that humans should or should not extend to an increasingly evolved population of cyber-machines.

Kristin Bly-Rogers, Curator, Progressive Insurance