THE DANTE HOTEL
San Francisco, California
Open 24 hours a day.
"Lynn Hershman's room at the Dante Hotel is one of the strongest and strangest exhibitions in the history of San Francisco."
Alfred Frankenstein, San Francisco Chronicle, October 13, 1974.
Materials
Indigenous objects from the space itself, wax figures, audio tapes.
Forms of Documentation: Catalogue, video, photographs
Background
In 1971, my exhibition in the University Art Museum in Berkeley simulated the space of a hotel room. I used found materials, (including blood and sheets ) as well as wax figures and audio tapes.
The museum would have preferred an exhibition of delicate pencil drawings. When I refused to exchange the drawings for the installation, the curators prematurely closed my exhibit, saying that "audio tapes" was media, (with a small m) not art and should not be shown in an Art Museum.
I realized that instead of bringing the hotel room to the museum, it might be more appropriate to bring the museum exhibition to a real hotel room.
I met Eleanor Coppola accidentally when we were arranging for the pick up and delivery of our children. We discovered we shared an interest in anti- art. Together we invented our installation in THE DANTE HOTEL.
Ellie rented room 43. 
I rented room 47. Ellie hired a friend, Tony Dingman to live in the private space of room 43, and be available to be watched whenever visitors came to the exhibit. Polaroid shots of the objects in the room and the subtle changes made through time became documented evidence.
My room recreated the ambience of presumed former inhabitants. Props gathered from the neighborhoods defined presumed fictional identities. Books, glasses, cosmetics and clothing were selected to reflect the education, personality and socio-economic background of possible occupants. A radio was turned on, broadcasting local news in counterpoint to the sound of gentle audiotaped breathing installed under the bed.
Pink and yellow light bulbs draped faded shadows like forgotten cadaevers over the lonely walls. Two life sized wax cast women "slept" in bed. Above them was wallpaper made of repeated photographs of the room itself. Sound became a kinetic element.
Visitors entered the building, signed in at the desk and received keys to the rooms. Residents of this transient hotel became "curators" for the exhibition. Eleanor kept her room open for one week. Mine was meant to stay open permanently, 24 hours a day, gathering dust and being reconstructed by the flux of viewers.
Nine months after our rooms were opened to the public, a man named Owen Moore came to see the rooms at 3:00 a.m. In the dead of night ,he thought the wax bodies were corpses. He phoned the police who took all the elements-- including the wax cast heads-- to central headquarters (an apt name, in this case) where they still remain to be claimed. Ordinary experiences of life brought this piece to its appropriate narrative closure.
Like Duchamp's ideas of ready mades, the DANTE HOTEL functioned as a "found environment". THE DANTE HOTEL became the first Alternative Space or Public,Site Specific Art art work produced in the United States.