I was going through my Google Reader yesterday when I saw a post at Art News Blog about a forthcoming installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Artist Chu Yun plans to have women sleeping in beds around the gallery space.”That’s interesting,” I thought. Watching someone sleep is a fairly intimate thing since that person is fairly vulnerable. There’s also a culturally ingrained habit of being cautious around a sleeping person lest you wake them. The installation had the chance of being an interesting, living testament to these ideas. 

But as I kept reading, I learned that the women in these beds are going to be especially vulnerable. The artist is requiring that the women take a sleeping pill before climbing into one of those beds. “Models” who have health insurance are favored since they will be able to go to their doctor to get a prescription drug in order to participate in an art show. 

Granted, if you don’t want to line up for a public drugging, you can just refrain from volunteering for the show. But I’ve spent two days thinking about this (and discussing it with others) and I can’t come up with a single reason why the women would need to be drugged. Pretending to be asleep isn’t that difficult of a task and chances are that anyone spending a long period of time in a bed will authentically fall asleep eventually. Sleeping pills aren’t even a guarantee for a restful slumber (and may cause side effects in some people). 

The inclusion of the sleeping pill (and the fact that the call is for female models only, between the ages of 18 and 40) gives the installation a creepy vibe of submission. Not only will the women put themselves on display in a vulnerable position for the public to view them, they will surrender their right to be marginally aware of their surroundings. I sincerely hope that there will be a female employee of the museum watching over the women to make sure that no one does anything inappropriate to them. The fact that such a provision would even have to be made attests to a flawed concept execution.