Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm… (2018)

Series of 3 pastel drawings.

- Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Brothel

Brothel.jpg

- Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Hospital

Hospital.jpg

- Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Office Building

Office Building better.jpg


Statement

The drawings in this series depict three separate imagined evacuation scenes. In each scene, the people inside the specified building have emptied out onto the sidewalk outside. The evacuations force the people inside of each building outside, with different results for each type of building. Some characters are imagined in the state they were in exactly when the alarm went off: standing outside the building still naked, giving birth, or having sex, as if caught red-handed. The firefighter character reappears in every scene, standing around just as idly as the evacuees, showing that it was a false alarm. The evacuees in this series take the alarm very seriously, to a possibly irresponsible extent, where they are putting themselves at risk by evacuating. The three works were made in the order they are listed and shown.

In ​Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Brothel, ​different characters from inside the brothel, including sex-workers and clients, stand outside the building in varying states of undress, and one couple remain in coitus. For the Brothel, the evacuation has taken the privacy away from the sex-workers and their clients, which the building provides.

In ​Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Hospital, ​the evacuation poses potentially life-threatening risks to evacuees. A woman mid-birth, and a patient on his deathbed are exposed to the elements of the outside world, and the care they need has been put on hold. The evacuation has taken the patients away from the vital medical equipment and the sterile environment that the building provides. The patients in the hospital beds and wheelchair were immobile during the evacuation, so they did not have the agency to resist the evacuation. The nurses who helped evacuate them, in compliance with the alarm, may have put them in more danger by trying to help them.

In ​Some Jackass Pulled the Fire Alarm at the Office Building​, the office-worker evacuees mix in with the people who were waiting for the bus on the sidewalk before them.