The Cave

The Cave is an installation about how our tales of the heroes, heroines and objects of American folklore take on a reality of their own and shape our understanding of our world. In the pleasure of retelling these stories we lose sense of how we reshape our own worldview.

The Cave is named after Plato’s allegory of representation, truth, freedom and enlightenment in which slaves are restrained so their reality is the shadows cast on a cave wall by puppeteers - shadows which become the objects of stories and tales. This work encourages play with shadows around a fire at night, where the participants are the captors manipulating the shadows of John Henry, a Salem witch and Cayote (for example) but also captives of the reality woven by their stories.

Plato ends the allegory with a freed slave who walks into daylight and discovers the truth of the shadows. In the daylight, participants are able to read true stories and etymologies of the
shadow puppets they played with during the night.

While the idea behind The Cave is heavily philosophical, it is meant to be playful environment where participants can immerse themselves in the visceral enjoyment of the fire and the joy of storytelling. It achieves its meaning only when participants lose themselves in companionship and their surroundings and later understand the origin of their stories.