Carolyn Lazard

Narrator: This sculpture by Carolyn Lazard prominently features a hospital television monitor.

Carolyn Lazard: It's an object that I had encountered many times in my own experiences receiving medications by infusion in infusion suites.

Narrator: Artist Carolyn Lazard.

Carolyn Lazard: It's the kind of monitor that is made to scale for one person. It comes out from the wall behind you while you're sitting in a lounging chair receiving an IV treatment.

I became interested in this object in some ways because of how it united two areas of interest of mine. One being experiences of medicalization, experiences inside the medical industrial complex. And then, also, my interest in video as a medium.

I was really interested in this experience of waiting as an alternative experience of time and time passing, and wanted to find a way to reproduce that in the work.

One of the main components of the work is cable television. Part of the process of getting cable television included as a material of this work was also having to work with the Whitney to get them to have it installed. Getting cable installed is a complicated process when you're a large institution, but cable television is a kind of ubiquitous thing.

The hope is that when you encounter this work in the gallery, which is more of a video sculpture that has a live element to it, whatever is playing on the monitor, whether it's QVC or a daytime soap or “Judge Judy,” that you're watching the exact same thing that somebody who's getting chemotherapy is watching at the exact same time.