EXCERPT FROM UNDER ISLAND Slide show script: (script co written by Carrie Dashow and Sxip Shirey. Concept and Slides; Dashow, from Under Island project (Bercowetz, Bua and Dashow) performed at Roosevelt Island and at PS1 October 2004 )

This is a chicken. Chickens have what is known as a gizzard.

A gizzard is a gland in the chicken’s body.

Chickens eat small stones which are then used by the gizzard to grind up food.

If you dig into some of these lumps you will find rocks, bits of bones and the teeth of a thousand animals.

We believe that this is how the monster eats.

The Asylum

The Insane Asylum was meant to be built as two Octagons with a connecting interior, but only one is completed.

Was it by design or was in the

subtle psychic architecture of

the land that led them to build

only one Octagon.

One Octagon directly over the brain of the beast.

(pause)

The brain lies deep underneath the structure, a submerged moon, it pulls at the dreams of the patients. When the slumbering beast dreams fitfully, their dreams are filled with fire and a thousand years of ice. When the beast dreams peacefully, they are wrapped in the milk warm silk of the

<Stefan reads “idea of a great consciousness” quote> ‘the idea of a great consciousness above is elative, the idea of a great consciousness below is maddening.’

John McCarthy does not sleep anymore.

He is building a fort. A fort at the tip of the island. He is sure the Brits are going to invade and he is going to stop them. He is sluicing clay from the rivers edge with his own bare fingers. He is shouldering scraps of stone from the quarry. He has found catches of teeth in the mud that he shoves into the crevices of his crude masonry.

One day when he is almost finished he turns around and the hill behind him opens, it opens up and looks straight into the night sky, a

giant eye, milky white, a half inch of

opaque sludge covering it’s surface.

The eye is blind. It takes forever to shut. When it does John McCarthy is gone.

The man who stands in his same body calls himself Thomas Maxey. Thomas is a much more simple man and doesn’t worry about the Brits or eyes blinking out of mountains.

<Carrie reads the plaque>

This work

Was done by

John McCarthy

Who built the light House

from the bottom to the Top

all ye who do pass by may

Pray for his soul when he dies