Will Higgins

Pa\Rasite
9 September 2021

In Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Props assist the House”, she pontificates on coming-of-age through the perspective of a newly built home, divorced from its momentarily fastened rigging, allowed to stand resolute to the weathers and whims of an uncaring earth.

In this brief thought towards the life and tribulations of a home -- forged from the hardness, eventuality and chaos, but shaped by the care of it’s creator — one must ask themself what a home must feel if neither are present. What if the house had no beginning? No end? No hardship? No purpose? Ultimately, it is a question of who wishes to help and to harm. We as humans see our relationship with the home as something purely beneficial towards its continued existence. We wash it. We mend it. We weatherize it. We undoubtedly have a part to play in it staying around. But, as much as we work towards its benefit, we violate the prebuilt ecosystems that they’re built on. We hoard. We break. We smash down the very walls to make room for a couch and two loveseats that don’t even match the rug. The question I seek to answer in this project is, what would a house as a living, breathing organism do when face to door with humanity. Would it see us as a necessary step in its evolution? Like the mitochondria and the cell? Or would it seek any means of purging us from itself?

I feel as though telling this parable through both traditional diorama and digital sculpture would be the best place to start and perhaps branch out into video making later on with the assets provided. The idea of metaphysicality in the fact that this house is an organism in its own right feels as though it needs some grounding in the real world in order to have the intended effect. That being said I hope to join together these elements to lead myself to a more concrete history of this house.

As a child I never really had a place to call home. I mean I was with family under a roof but it was always someone else’s home. Whether it was my mom’s boss’s old yoga space, made fit for human habitation or a trailer out in the middle of nowhere, home as a place of my own choosing or that of my family’s choosing is an alien concept. I’ve always felt like an intruder waiting for some alarm to go off or something to that very dramatic effect.

(The name Pa\Rasite is derived from the word parasite and rasite. Rasite is the finnish word for burden or in legal terms it would imply someone who is in a position of servitude or encumbrance.)
 

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