Jay Critchley
Artist Jay Critchley’s visual, conceptual and performance work has traversed the globe. He lives year round in Provincetown, Massachusetts USA, on the tip of Cape Cod, where he founded and directs Theater in the Ground@ Septic Space in his backyard septic tank. He produced, wrote and directed two movies in 2002: Toilet Treatments, HBO Audience Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival, and Providence Dirt Newsreel. He produced a CD, Big Twig Tunnel Tapes – Boston’s Big Dig Sings, recorded 125 feet below the city before the tunnels opened for traffic.
Jay has taught at the Museum School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and has had recent residencies at Harvard University, AS220 in Rhode Island, and Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in New York City. He was recently awarded a Special Citation form the Boston Society of Architects’ CapeWind Competition for his proposal, Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, which toured Holland, Germany and England. He runs the annual AIDS/women’s health benefit Provincetown Harbor Swim for Life. His project, Global Yawning for a small planet, was exhibited at the Boston Center for the Arts in 2008, and was featured at an international conference in Bogota, Columbia last summer, and his Final Passage – a mummified 1965 Chevy Impala – was installed in an abandoned mausoleum in a Providence, Rhode Island cemetery last summer. His performance piece, 21 Gun Salute, was featured at this fall’s Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.
BIG TWIG Tunnel Tapes – Boston’s Big Dig Sings
On three occasions in 2003, Critchley, Timothy O’Keefe and a small cadre of singers, musicians, photographers, videographers and curios descended into an unfinished tunnel 125 feet below the city to record their voices, song, music making and ambient and sampled sound. The artist was spurned by Big Dig officials to access the underground roadway, but ultimately received the OK with the clout of Governor Romney, Senator Kennedy and US Representative Bill Delahunt.
This random collection of archeological recordings from the subterranean workplace, access ramps and stairwells includes opera, vocals, percussion, viola, various wind instruments, ululation and ambient recordings of the un-trafficked two mile tunnel. The concept for the project is an ecological one, inspired by the tree‑like footprint of this monument to the automobile, our gluttonous appetite for petroleum, and our war making to defend it.