GHOST HOLE
Team:
Ben Roosevelt has exhibited in the United States and internationally, including the 2007 Atlanta Biennial, the show Rigor Mort in Dundalk, Ireland, and House Projects, a series of projects across London, Ireland, and New York City. Roosevelt’s work has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, and the Forward Arts Foundation of Atlanta. His work has been reviewed in Circa, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Irish Times.
Why were you interested in participating in The Putting Lot? Does it relate to work you’ve done in the past?
As a kid in the ‘80s, I spent a lot of time in surreal family environments like the Chucky Cheese restaurants, Disney World, and miniature golf courses. The Putting Lot project caught my attention because it offers a great chance to design a hole for a course in an unusual place. I love the idea of using a mini-golf format (which is a part of sprawl in many places) to address issues of sustainability in a transitional neighborhood in Brooklyn.
What is the inspiration for your design? How does it relate to urban sustainability?
To create my design, we photographed the exact area of the vacant lot where my hole would be built, prior to any cleaning or building. Then the photographs were used to make an outdoor, high-traffic decal for the actual playing surface of the hole. A player can look down and see what was in the exact spot before the hole was built: trash, debris, rocks, etc.
I think of this image as a “ghost” of the vacant lot applied to the surface of the completed design. In folklore, ghosts are supposedly observed following hallways in buildings that no longer exist, so that they may bestanding on the spot of the floor two feet below the current floor of a place, for example. Similarly, I want to reveal the ghost of the site prior to building a miniature golf hole. The playing surface of my hole is meant to present a past landscape of this exact spot to the player.
What else would you like to see in an empty space in the city?
Some of the things I would like to see include gardens, bazaars, cisterns, and forests.
Do you have any childhood memories or good stories about miniature golf?
When I was three years old, I was attacked by fire ants at a miniature golf course. My parents looked over and saw me stomping my feet and jumping around howling.
What do you hope to see at The Putting Lot this summer?
Locals.