The Jung Hotel

works by Susan Gisleson

“The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.” — Elizabeth Bowen, Irish-born writer (1899-1973)

The Jung Hotel is an exploration of the collective unconscious. An installation that compares the mind to a hotel: a bedroom filled with images from dreams of a thousand sleepers. It is where the infinity of childhood or the contents of one’s brain can resemble the internet-a very loose configuration of images and irrelevant facts; the idea of being everywhere and nowhere at once. In the Jung Hotel is a bar called the Nobel Savage with mirror like qualities that can illuminate as well as distort what we see: the stories we tell other people and the stories we tell ourselves. The Jung Hotel is an installation that demonstrates reality is malleable.

Susan Gisleson is a local artist and arts educator who is a founding member of Press Street as well as one of the organizers of Press Street’s 24 Hour Draw-a-thon. She teaches art full time at Metairie Park Country Day School.