Waking the Dragon: Turning on Jason Rhoades

“The way you turn on The Creation Myth,” William says, “is more about memory than technology.”

It’s Thursday morning and William—ICA’s Visitor Services Coordinator and Program Technician—is letting me follow him around as he turns on Jason Rhoades, Four Roads. He starts with the electrical breakers in their secret upstairs room, then moves to the old-fashioned TV monitors on the mezzanine.

Down in the first floor gallery, he jacks up the heavy V-8 engine in Garage Renovation New York (CHERRY Makita) which sags on its platform of shims over the course of a day, then—at last—turns his attention to The Creation Myth. I’ve been looking forward to this moment ever since Grace (who took over the job briefly when William was away) told me that crawling around inside the sprawling piece was the most powerful experience of a work of art she’d ever had.

Filling the back of the gallery, a ring of stacked folding tables is covered in and surrounded by stuff: buckets, computers, books, empty juice bottles, microscopes, monitors, a sewing machine, a plastic tunnel, a stuffed snake riding an electric train, and more. This is The Creation Myth, Jason Rhoades’s model of the artist’s brain at work. There’s music and smoke rings, VCRs and video games, a motion sensor and an inflatable stomach—a widely divergent range of things with one important common denominator: they all need power. William paraphrases a line from exhibition curator Ingrid Schaffner’s keynote talk: “Power is the fifth road,” he says.

William moves around the edges of the piece, plugging in plugs and flipping switches. The overhead projector lights up and starts its ballerina twirl, making patterns of light dance across the walls. The fan for the Stomach wheezes as it inflates. A TV spins slowly, static buzzing on its screen. So many orange power cords loop and coil across the floor, only William knows which are functional and which merely formal.

It turns out that a surprising number of The Creation Myth’s bits and pieces are functional. The fanned array of remotes mostly really turn stuff on. The charging Makita drill battery by my feet will take its turn powering the electric train. The Prick machine, having made its violent holes in the gallery wall during installation, now charges the battery for the car radio that pulses the beat of Power 106 FM through the gallery.

“Slowly but surely I came up with my own process for turning the piece on,” William says, moving deeper in, toward the part Rhoades called the Inner Child. “You’re stepping over and ducking under something at the same time, and little wires hang down that can scratch your neck.” He presses a button on a laptop and it comes to life slowly. “I like that this computer has a program icon that just says the internet.” Then he points through a thicket of machinery. “There’s a VCR hidden there.” He points in another direction. “The microscope in front gets run through the VCR.” He shows me the protruding table legs that can trip the uninitiated, the red and black wires twisting through the air at face level. “Those things are my nemesis,” he says.

Rhoades set up two video games on the Nintendo PlayStation in the heart of The Creation Myth. Each morning William decides which one to run. Usually he chooses Cruis’n USA over Mario Kart because he finds the music more congenial, but either way, he likes the how the trebly, tinny video game music fits with Power 106 FM’s throbbing bass. He checks the motion sensor that activates the model train, then turns on the fog machine.

Near the fog machine, which makes the smoke for the rings that blow out of the Asshole, a green bucket rests on a ladder. This is just one of many buckets that are part of this work, some made into lights, some designated, in neat block letters, as parts of the system. “MEMORY (The Wood Pile)” one reads. Another is labeled “THE INNER LIGHT.” The one on the ladder, though, has a more traditional function. It collects water that drips from the tube of the fog machine. William checks it daily, emptying it as the moisture collects.

It’s getting late, and we’re almost done. The museum will open soon. William pauses, though, to make sure I understand something. “When you’re in here,” he says, “and you’re turning things on, you get the idea that it’s very intentionally designed. You can feel he knew someone else would be doing this. I think about that every day.”

Behind us, the model train clatters on its track, and the overhead projector casts its dreamy patterns. Over our heads, the Asshole releases a shimmering ring of smoke. The sleeping dragon, gently awakened, rattles its charged scales.