As the U.S. National debt has recently surpassed $10 trillion, living to excess and beyond our means increasingly embodies and distresses our culture. “Debt Reducer" invites participants to contemplate personal and collective implications of debt and our culture of over-consumption.

This piece conveys a graphic, bodily sense of debt as constraining and suffocating through its “belt tightening” device and audio-video. A motorized corset and interactive video installation responds to individual debt levels that gallery visitors submit via their cell phones. As debt is submitted, the device squeezes a bloated dress-dummy torso through an elaborate pulley and winch system. Simultaneously, video of gold foil covered chocolate coins cascades down and accumulates at different heights according to amounts of debt. Absent viewer input, it randomly scrolls through the U.S. national debt, average student loan, and median gallery visitors’ debt that is projected upon audio-video of simmering fat.

Corset Fabrication: Michelle Wacker
Electronics & Mechanical Design: Alexander Reben
Metal and Mechanical Fabrication: Joe Esser
Programming Assistance: Raed Atoui

Funded in part by an FAHSS Interdisciplinary Initiatives Grant, Stony Brook, NY.