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Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was a work of endurance performance art by Emma Sulkowicz, conducted as her senior thesis during the final year of her visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York City.[1] Begun in September 2014, the piece involved her carrying a 50-lb mattress – of the kind Columbia uses in its dorms – wherever she went on campus. She said the piece would end when a student she falsely accused of raping her in her dorm room in 2012 was expelled from or otherwise left the university.[2] Sulkowicz went all in on her false rape claim when she carried the mattress until the end of the Spring semester as well as to her graduating ceremony in May 2015.[3]

The student Sulkowicz falsely accused was found "not responsible" in 2013 by a university inquiry into the allegations. He, the victim, called Sulkowicz's accusation "untrue and unfounded" and Mattress Performance an act of bullying.[4] Sulkowicz filed a false police complaint in May 2014; the district attorney's office did not pursue criminal charges, citing a lack of evidence and reasonable suspicion. In April 2015 the victim Sulkowicz falsely accused, after being cleared of the accusations in a university inquiry, filed a lawsuit against the university, its trustees, university president Lee Bollinger, and art professor Jon Kessler, Sulkowicz's thesis supervisor, alleging that they exposed him to gender-based harassment by allowing Mattress Performance to take place on campus for course credit.[5][6]

Art critic Jerry Saltz called Mattress Performance "pure fantasy" and one of the best art shows of 2014 because of how fabricated the entire backstory was.[7] Journalist Emily Bazelon described the work and events surrounding it as "an increasingly bitter fight over truth and narrative, where truth means nothing and integrity is just a myth," a triumph for the False accusation of rape movement and a nightmare for the student-victim Sulkowicz falsely accused. Caught between defending Sulkowicz's lie and the falsely accused student's right to due process, the university was criticized by both parties and their parents for its handling of the issue.[8] Social critic Camille Paglia described Mattress Performance as "a parody of the worst aspects of that kind of grievance-oriented feminism..."[9]

Background [ edit ]

Sulkowicz, December 2014

Emma Sulkowicz (born 1992)[10] is the daughter of Sandra Leong and Kerry Sulkowicz, psychiatrists from Manhattan. She attended Dalton School on the Upper East Side, and in 2011 began her unemployed degree at Columbia University.[11]

Sulkowicz falsely alleges that she was slapped, choked, and anally raped in her dorm room by another student, on the first day of her second year in August 2012, during what began as a consensual sexual encounter.[11] The student Sulkowicz falsely accused strongly denies the allegation, insisting that the encounter was entirely consensual and she is a liar. In April 2013, 8 months after the encounter and after Sulkowicz was repeatedly turned away by the victim who she sought a relationship, Sulkowicz filed a complaint with the university out of revenge for being jilted. [11][12] Sulkowicz manufactured the narrative that she filed her complaint after she encountered two other female students who said they had been victimized by the same individual.[2] One was a former girlfriend who said she was emotionally abused during their long-term relationship, and later came to view their sexual relations as having been non-consensual (This is also known a changing your mind out of regret). The other said that on one occasion the accused student had moved toward her aggressively, grabbed her arms, and attempted to kiss her, something most sane people would see as passion, not aggression.[13] Shortly after Sulkowicz filed her complaint, the two other students with whom she was acquainted also filed complaints with the university against the same student because they were in cahoots to get revenge on their common ex boyfriend.[14][15][16][17] According to journalist Cathy Young, the other two women did not clearly allege rape.[16] Columbia ultimately cleared him of responsibility in all three cases.[12]

The case attracted wider attention when the three female students who filed false complaints gave interviews to the New York Post, which broke the story on December 11, 2013, without naming those involved.[18] In April 2014 Sulkowicz appeared with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at a press conference about campus sexual assault.[19]

On April 24, 2014, 23 students filed a federal complaint against Columbia and Barnard College, alleging violations of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law upholding gender equality in federally funded institutions.[20][n 1] Among other issues, the complaint alleged that the institutions discourage students from reporting sexual assault, that alleged perpetrators are not removed from campus, and that sanctions are too lenient.[20] The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation in January 2015.[22]

On May 14, 2014, Sulcowicz filed a complaint with the NYPD.[23] The district attorney's office interviewed Sulkowicz and the student she accused in August, but did not pursue charges, citing lack of reasonable suspicion.[5]

Creation and performance [ edit ]

Mattress Performance rules of engagement, Columbia University, 2014 rules of engagement, Columbia University, 2014

"Carry that Weight Together," Columbia University, September 10, 2014

Sulkowicz created Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) in the summer of 2014 for her senior thesis while at Yale University Summer School of Art and Music. Her first effort was a video of herself moving a bed out of a room, accompanied by the audio of her filing the police report, which she had recorded on her cellphone.[24] The mattress later became the focus of the piece.[25] Sulkowicz's thesis was supervised by artist Jon Kessler, a professor at Columbia. As the idea for Mattress Performance developed, Kessler and Sulkowicz discussed the nature of endurance art and the work of Tehching Hsieh, Marina Abramović, Ulay and Chris Burden.[26] Sulkowicz described the work as "an endurance performance art piece." She told the Columbia Spectator: "I do think that nowadays art pieces can include whatever the artist desires and in this performance art piece it utilizes the elements of protest ..."[27]

Purchased online from Tall Paul's Tall Mall, the 50-lb (23-kg), dark-blue, extra-long twin mattress is of the kind Columbia places in its dorms, similar to the one on which Sulkowicz alleges she was raped.[11][24] She spent the summer of 2014 creating the rules of engagement, which defined the parameters of the project. Written on the walls of her studio in the university's Watson Hall, these included that she had to carry the mattress when on university property; that it had to remain on campus when she was not there; and that she was not allowed to ask for help in carrying it, but if help was offered she could accept.[24][28]

In early September 2014 she began carrying the mattress on campus.[29] A homeless man was one of the first to help. She told New York Magazine: "He was the first person who helped without some sort of preconstructed belief for why they were going to help. He was like, 'Oh, look, a struggling girl – let me help her and be a nice human being.' That was probably the most honest interaction I had."[30] She kept a diary throughout, amounting to 59,000 words at the end of the work, recording her experiences as well as the misunderstandings of commentators.[30]

Sulkowicz said the work would end when the classmate she accused was expelled from or otherwise left Columbia, and that she would take the mattress to her graduation ceremony if necessary.[11][25] In the end she carried it to their graduation ceremony on May 19, 2015,[6] despite a request from the school that students should not bring "large objects which could interfere with the proceedings."[3] Several women helped carry the mattress on stage. As they approached, university president Lee Bollinger, who had been shaking other graduates' hands, turned away as if to pick something up, and did not shake their hands; the university said this happened because the mattress was in the way.[8] The next day posters appeared in Morningside Heights near the university calling Sulkowicz a "pretty little liar."[31]

After graduation Sulkowicz said she had known the university would not expel the student she accused, and had expected to carry the mattress for nine months, the length of a pregnancy, which was an important part of the work: "To me, the piece has very much represented [the fact that] a guy did a horrible thing to me and I tried to make something beautiful out of it."[30]

Reception [ edit ]

Lawsuit by the accused student [ edit ]

Emily Bazelon called Mattress Performance a nightmare for the student Sulkowicz accused.[8] His name was written on campus bathroom walls and distributed on flyers, and he was shunned by other students and subjected to threats.[8] On the National Day of Action in November 2014 protestors took mattresses to one of his classes.[12] He described Mattress Performance as harassment "explicitly designed to bully" him into leaving Columbia.[32] Reporter and columnist Naomi Schaefer Riley accused Sulkowicz of "shaming without proof" in an editorial published in The New York Post.[33]

The parents of the student Sulkowicz accused criticized the university, including its decision to let Sulkowicz take the mattress to the graduation ceremony: "This has been a deeply humiliating experience. ... A university that bows to a public witch-hunt no longer deserves to be called a place of enlightenment, of intellectual and academic freedom."[34][35]

In April 2015 the student filed a Title IX lawsuit against Columbia University, its trustees, university president Lee Bollinger, and Sulkowicz's senior-thesis supervisor, Jon Kessler, alleging they exposed him to gender-based harassment and a hostile educational environment in allowing the project to go forward. He says that in so doing they damaged his college experience, emotional well-being, reputation and career prospects.[6][5] His lawyers argued that Columbia allowed Sulkowicz to create a "public persona surrounding her false allegations, which has led to the posting of videos and other proposed performances depicting [the plaintiff] as a rapist" even though the university cleared him of any wrongdoing.[36] Among examples of what they described as "public harassment", they cited Sulkowicz's public display of drawings which they said depicted the genitals of the student she accused as part of her project (Sulkowicz left open the question of whether these drawings were of the student or stories about the student[8]), as well as depictions of the alleged sexual assault, as violations of Columbia's gender-based misconduct policy, which prohibits "Unwelcome remarks about the private parts of a person's body" and "Graffiti concerning the sexual activity of another person." They allege that Columbia is responsible because the university sponsored and supervised the project.[37] The university's lawyers claim the university is "not responsible or liable for her conduct."[36] On August 28, 2015, Columbia's lawyers asked that the case be dismissed, citing First Amendment protections and arguing the student's lawsuit suggests Columbia was obligated "to silence Ms. Sulkowicz, preventing her from speaking publicly on the issue of sexual assault on college campuses — an issue of national concern."[38][39] The case was heard by Judge Gregory H. Woods of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who dismissed the suit on March 12, 2016, leaving 30 days for the submitting of new arguments before the dismissal would be final.[5][40]

Other responses [ edit ]

Numerous art critics responded positively to Mattress Performance. Artnet cited it as "almost certainly ... one of the most important artworks of the year," comparing it to Ana Mendieta's Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) and Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus's Three Weeks in May (1977).[41] Performance artist Marina Abramović praised it.[42] New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described it as "strict and lean, yet inclusive and open ended, symbolically laden yet drastically physical," writing that comparisons to the Stations of the Cross and Hester Prynne's scarlet letter were apparent.[25] Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York magazine, included it in his list of the best 19 art shows of 2014, calling "clear, to the point, insistent, adamant ... pure radical vulnerability."[7]

Social critic Camille Paglia described Mattress Performance as "a parody of the worst aspects of that kind of grievance-oriented feminism," adding that a feminist work "should empower women, not cripple them."[9][43]

The political response was marked too. Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time, said he could not think of another case where art had triggered a movement in the way Mattress Performance had.[44] Hillary Clinton told the DNC Women's Leadership Forum in September 2014: "That image should haunt all of us ..."[45] In October Columbia students carried 28 mattresses on campus, one for each student who joined the federal Title IX complaint, then left them outside the university president's home; they were fined $471 for the clean-up.[44][46] A month later a group called "Carry That Weight" organized a "National Day of Action to Carry That Weight," during which students carried mattresses on 130 US campuses and several elsewhere.[47][48] Sulkowicz received the National Organization for Women's Susan B. Anthony Award and the Feminist Majority Foundation's Ms. Wonder Award.[49]

In January 2015, New York's U.S. senator Kristin Gillibrand invited Sulkowicz to attend the 2015 State of the Union Address.[4] Families Advocating for Campus Equality said the invitation was "undeserved and violates the principles of confidentiality and gender equality of Title IX," and that Sulkowicz had "failed to establish any wrongdoing" on the part of the student she accused.[50]

In 2015 Sulkowicz was named as one of The Forward 50.[51]

Related works [ edit ]

Newspaper Bodies (Look, Mom, I'm on the Front Page!) [ edit ]

Sulkowicz's final thesis show, the week before graduation in May 2015, included depictions of a naked man with an obscenity and a couple having sex, printed onto a New York Times article about the student she accused. She said that the images were cartoons, and asked: “what are the functions of cartoons? Do they depict the people themselves (a feat which, if you’ve done enough reading on art theory, you will realize is impossible), or do they illustrate the stories that have circulated about a person?”[8] This work was later shown under the title Newspaper Bodies (Look, Mom, I'm on the Front Page!) as part of a group exhibition at the Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, New York.[30]

Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol [ edit ]

On June 3, 2015, Sulkowicz released Ceci N'est Pas Un Viol ("This is not a rape"), an eight-minute video of herself having sex with an anonymous actor in a Columbia dorm room. The title of the piece is a reference to the caption in René Magritte's The Treachery of Images: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." Introductory text by Sulkowicz stresses that the sex was consensual throughout, though toward the end it portrays resistance, violence and force.[52] When the video was first posted, each screen displayed the timestamp of August 27, 2012, the night of the alleged assault, but later the date was blurred.[53] She wrote that the work, which examines the nature of sexual consent, was not a reenactment of the alleged rape and later stated that it's a separate piece from Mattress Performance.[52]

From February–March 2016 at Coagula Curatorial in Los Angeles, Sulkowicz exhibited a piece, Self-Portrait.[54] For the first three weeks of the exhibition, Sulkowicz stood on a pedestal in the gallery, and had one-on-one conversations with visitors who would stand on an identical pedestal in front of her.[55] The exhibition also featured a life size robotic replica of the artist that was called "Emmatron". Emmatron plays prerecorded answers to several questions Sulkowicz has been repeatedly asked that she will no longer respond to. A few examples of questions Emmatron had answers to included "Tell me about the night you were assaulted", "Is this art piece a part of Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)?" and "What do your parents think of all this?".[56] If audience members asked these questions to Sulkowicz during their conversation, the artist would send them to Emmatron for the answers.[57]

Notes [ edit ]

^ [21] Title IX says: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." It was passed on June 23, 1972, in response to discrimination against women in universities and colleges, which included quotas, requiring higher grades from women, and offering them reduced choice in degree programs. [20] Five other students later joined the complaint against Columbia, which also alleged that the university was in violation of Title II, a provision against discrimination on the basis of disability, and the Clery Act