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Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) is a work of endurance performance art by Emma Sulkowicz, an American fourth-year visual arts major at Columbia University in New York City. Created in September 2014 for her senior thesis, the work involves Sulkowicz carrying a 50lb, extra-long, dark-blue mattress wherever she goes on campus, until a student she alleges sexually assaulted her is expelled from or leaves the university.

Art critic Jerry Saltz included Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) in his list of the best art shows of 2014, calling it "pure radical vulnerability." The accused student, who was found "not responsible" by a university inquiry, described it as an act of bullying.

Emma Sulkowicz

Emma Sulkowicz (born 1992) is of Chinese, Japanese and Jewish descent, the daughter of Sandra Leong and Kerry Sulkowicz, psychiatrists from Manhattan. Sulkowicz attended Dalton School on the Upper East Side, where she was an A student who enjoyed fencing. In 2011 she began her degree at Columbia University, where she joined the Alpha Delta Phi Society. After planning to major in mechanical physics, she chose visual arts instead.

Background

Sulkowicz's allegation

Sulkowicz alleges that, on the first day of her sophomore year in August 2012, during what began as a consensual sexual encounter in her room, the accused choked her, slapped her face, held her arms and anally raped her, while she struggled and told him to stop. She maintains that he then left the room without speaking. He and Sulkowicz had had sex twice before, earlier in the year, but not anal sex. According to the accused, the sexual encounter in August was likewise entirely consensual. He denies the allegations of violence, and maintains that they had brief, consensual, anal sex followed by other sexual activity, after which they fell asleep. He says he left her room the next morning while Sulkowicz was still sleeping.

For several weeks afterwards, until October 2012, Sulkowicz and the accused exchanged occasional, apparently friendly, Facebook messages, e.g. "I love you". They saw each other on social occasions, but not alone. He sent her two further messages, in January and February 2013, to which she did not respond. She texted him once more, in March 2013, suggesting a meeting, but did not follow up. Sulkowicz said later that she had sent the messages because she was upset and wanted to talk to him about the incident, but decided against doing so. By the time of her last message, she said she had visited the university's Office of Gender-Based Misconduct, and that they asked whether she had tried talking to the accused. A university spokesperson said in February 2015 that its gender-based misconduct policy does not recommend informal resolution for such complaints.

Other allegations

In early 2013 Sulkowicz discussed the incident with "Natalie", the accused's former girlfriend. Natalie alleged that he had been abusive during their relationship, which lasted from October 2011 to spring 2012. The accused denies that charge and describes it as a difficult relationship. Sulkowicz said that the conversation with Natalie prompted her to complain to the university. She filed her complaint on 18 April and Natalie filed hers a few days later; the latter alleged nonconsensual sex and emotional abuse.

After hearing about Sulkowicz, a third student, "Josie", filed a complaint that the accused had followed her to an upstairs room at a party in April 2012, turned off the lights, grabbed her and tried to kiss her, but she fought him off. The accused denies the alllegation and has described the women's complaints as collusion. A fourth student, a black man, "Adam", who describes himself as queer, filed a complaint with the university in the fall of 2014, also prompted by Sulkowicz's case. He alleged that the accused sexually assaulted him (in an unspecified way) in 2011, and that he complained about it months later to a student group to which both belonged. His complaint to the university remains unresolved.

University hearings

The standard of proof at the university hearings was the civil standard, "preponderance of the evidence". The university ruled against Natalie in July 2013, after she stopped responding to inquiries. Josie's complaint was upheld, then overturned on appeal in October 2013. Josie said later that she had a full-time job and did not want to spend more time on the hearings. The next day a hearing was held in Sulkowicz's case, and the following month the university found the accused "not responsible".

Sulkowicz and the accused both complained about the proceedings. He complained that he had not been allowed to introduce the Facebook messages as evidence. She complained that the accused was granted months of postponements, that she was not allowed to discuss the case with anyone, that a university investigator took inaccurate notes of interviews with her, and that she had to offer unnecessarily graphic details during the hearing. A graduate student who accompanied the accused to the hearing contested this last point in a later interview.

Sulkowicz filed a report with the NYPD on 14 May 2014. Columbia's student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, controversially published the accused's name two days later. The accused was told in late 2014 that no criminal charges would be brought.

Federal complaint

Universities in the United States are obliged to ensure gender equality on campuses, under Title IX, a federal civil rights law. In April 2014 Sulkowicz and 22 other students, later joined by five others, filed a 100-page federal complaint alleging that Columbia and Barnard College were in violation of their Title IX obligations, as well as Title II (a provision against discrimination by a public body on the basis of disability) and the Clery Act (which requires federally financed universities to disclose campus crime statistics). The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights opened two investigations in January 2015 into the Title IX and Title II complaints against Columbia.

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)

Sulkowicz created Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) for her senior thesis while at Yale University Summer School of Art and Music in 2014. Her first effort was a video of herself dismantling a bed, accompanied by the audio of her filing the police report in May that year, which she recorded on her cellphone. The mattress later became the sole focus of the piece. Sulkowicz told New York Magazine:

I thought about how ... the mattress represents a private place where a lot of your intimate life happens; and how I have brought my life out in front for the public to see; and the act of bringing something private and intimate out into the public mirrors the way my life has been. Also the mattress as a burden, because of what has happened there, that has turned my own relationship with my bed into something fraught.

Purchased from Tall Paul's Tall Mall, the mattress is of the kind Columbia places in its dorms, similar to the one on which she alleges she was attacked. Sulkowicz spent the summer of 2014 creating the rules of engagement. Written on the walls of her studio in the university's Watson Hall, these state that she must carry the mattress whenever she is on university property; that it must remain on campus even when Sulkowicz is not there; and that she is not allowed to ask for help in carrying it, but if help is offered she may accept it. In September that year she began carrying the mattress on campus. She has said she plans to do so until the accused is expelled from or otherwise leaves Columbia, and that she will take it to her graduation ceremony if necessary.

Reception

New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described the piece as "strict and lean, yet inclusive and open ended, symbolically laden yet drastically physical", writing that comparisons to the Stations of the Cross and Hester Prynne's scarlet letter are apparent. Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time, said that he " think of another instance where a work of art has triggered a movement in this way." Art critic Jerry Saltz called it "clear, to the point, insistent, adamant ... pure radical vulnerability", and included it in his list of the best 19 art shows of 2014. Artnet cited it as "one of the most important artworks of the year". Sulkowicz received the National Organization for Women's Susan B. Anthony Award and the Feminist Majority Foundation's Ms. Wonder Award for the piece. Hillary Clinton commented on the work, saying "That image should haunt all of us".

The accused described Carry That Weight as harassment: "It's explicitly designed to bully me into leaving the school". He said that protesters had followed him around carrying mattresses to his classes, and had posted information and photographs of him online. He also noted that, as the piece serves as Sulkowicz's senior thesis, it is being supervised by a Columbia faculty member.

According to Nato Thompson, the work was "adopted ... swiftly and effectively". On 29 October 2014 dozens of Columbia students carried 28 mattresses around the school's Morningside Heights campus, one for each student who joined the federal Title IX complaint, then left them outside the home of Lee Bollinger, president of the university, attracting a $471 fine for the clean-up. A month later a group called "Carry That Weight" organized similar protests in 130 campuses in the US, and several around the world, including the Central European University in Budapest, calling for a "National Day of Action to Carry That Weight".

Sulkowicz was invited to the 2015 State of the Union Address as a guest of Senator Kristen Gillibrand. She said she was disappointed that the President had not mentioned sexual assault on campus. Families Advocating for Campus Equality said her invitation was "undeserved", and that she had "failed to establish any wrongdoing by the student she accused". Gillibrand, who co-sponsored the Campus Safety and Accountability Act, said the invitation sent "a message to my colleagues and to the White House that this issue is important".

References

1. ^ For "endurance performance art", see Sulkowitzc, Emma (2 September 2014). "Emma Sulkowicz: "Carry That Weight", Columbia Daily Spectator, 2:22 mins. Cite error: The named reference "endurance" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
2. McDonald, Soraya Nadia (29 October 2014). "It's hard to ignore a woman toting a mattress everywhere she goes, which is why Emma Sulkowicz is still doing it". The Washington Post.
3. ^ Saltz, Jerry (10 December 2014). "The 19 Best Art Shows of 2014". New York Magazine.
4. ^ Kaminer, Ariel (22 December 2014). "Accusers and the Accused, Crossing Paths at Columbia University". The New York Times.
5. "Carry That Weight", Emma Sulkowicz interviewed by Roberta Smith, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, December 2014, c. 48:50 mins.
6. ^ Grigoriadis, Vanessa (21 September 2014). "Meet the College Women Who Are Starting a Revolution Against Campus Sexual Assault", New York Magazine.
7. ^ Bogler, Emma (16 May 2014). "Frustrated by Columbia's inaction, student reports sexual assault to police". Columbia Spectator.
8. ^ Perez-Pena, Richard; Taylor, Kath (3 May 2014). "Fight Against Sexual Assaults Holds Colleges to Account", The New York Times.
9. ^ Young, Cathy (3 February 2015). "Columbia Student: I Didn't Rape Her", The Daily Beast.
10. ^ Ryan, Erin Gloria (6 February 2015). "How to Make an Accused Rapist Look Good", Jezebel.
11. Zeilinger, Julie (3 February 2015). "The Treatment of Emma Sulkowicz Proves We Still Have No Idea How to Talk About Rape", Mic.
12. ^ Leong, Sandra; Sulkowicz, Kerry (2 October 2014). "An open letter to President Bollinger and the board of trustees". Columbia Spectator.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
13. Abrams, Abbby and Lau, Steven (16 May 2014). "Why we published the name of an alleged rapist", Columbia Spectator.

    Abby Abrams (13 May 2014). "List of 'sexual assault violators' written in Hamilton, Lerner, Butler bathrooms", Columbia Spectator.

14. Pryal, Katie Rose Guest (15 January 2015). "Where Title IX meets Title II", Chronicle Vitae.
15. Bogler, Emma (24 April 2014). "Students file federal complaint against Columbia, alleging Title IX, Title II, Clery Act violations", Columbia Spectator.

    Tyler Kingkade, Tyler (18 September 2014). "Columbia University Rape Victim Says She Was Forced Out Of School Twice", The Huffington Post.

16. Sulkowicz, Emma (15 May 2014). "'My Rapist Is Still on Campus'". Time.
17. Kingkade, Tyler (12 January 2015). "Columbia University Is Under Federal Investigation For Sexual Assault Cases". The Huffington Post.
18. Pérez-Peña, Richard (3 February 2015). "Fight Against Sexual Assaults Holds Colleges to Account". The New York Times.
19. Smith 2014, c. 38:45 mins.
20. ^ Smith, Roberta (22 September 2014). "In a Mattress, a Lever for Art and Political Protest". The New York Times.
21. Van Syckle, Katie (4 September 2014). "The Columbia Student Carrying a Mattress Everywhere Says Reporters Are Triggering Rape Memories", New York Magazine.
22. Smith, 17 December 2014, from c. 39:57 mins; for Watson Hall, Sulkowitzc, 2 September 2014, from c. 2:00 mins.
23. ^ Kaplan, Sarah (28 November 2014). "How a mattress became a symbol for student activists against sexual assault", The Washington Post.
24. Davis, Ben (4 September 2014). "Columbia Student's Striking Mattress Performance". Artnet.
25. "Meet Our 2014 Honorees". Susan B. Anthony Awards. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
26. "Ms. Wonder Awards Honor Young Grassroots Leaders in Anti-Violence and Fair Wage Movements". Feminist Newswire. 19 November 2014.
27. Grigoriadis, Vanessa (21 September 2014). "New York Magazine".
28. Kaplan, Sarah (4 February 2015). "In Columbia University rape case, accuser and accused are now fighting it out in public", The Washington Post.
29. Schonfeld, Zach (30 October 2014). "Photos: Hundreds of Columbia Students Carry Mattresses in Sexual Assault Protest". Newsweek.
30. Nathanson, Rebecca (1 December 2014). "How 'Carry That Weight' Is Changing the Conversation on Campus Sexual Assault", Rolling Stone.
31. Svokos, Alexandra (29 October 2014). "Students Bring Out Mattresses In Huge 'Carry That Weight' Protest Against Sexual Assault". Huffington Post.

    For Budapest, see Kashmira, Gander (13 November 2014). "University 'charges students hundreds of dollars' to clean up mattresses from Emma Sulkowicz anti-sexual assault solidarity protest", The Independent.

32. McDonald, Soraya Nadia (20 January 2015). "Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz carried mattress to protest campus rape. Now she's attending the State of the Union.", The Washington Post.
33. Van Syckle, Katie (21 January 2015). "Emma Sulkowicz Was ‘Let Down’ by Obama SOTU Speech", New York Magazine.
34. Cascone, Sarah (27 January 2015). "Senator Gillibrand Criticized for Emma Sulkowicz State of the Union Invite". Artnet News.
35. Van Syckle, Katie (24 January 2015). "Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Talks Campus Rape and The Hunting Ground at Sundance", New York Magazine.

• 2014 works
• 2015 works
• Feminism and the arts
• Morningside Heights, Manhattan
• New York City performance art
• Political art
• Public art in New York City
• Rape in the United States