San Francisco Installation Artist Brian Goggin Opens Up About His Creative Process With KQED Arts

While starting his latest project entitled “Meghalaya“, San Francisco installation artist and longtime friend of Laughing Squid Brian Goggin sat down with Cynthia Stone of KQED Arts to talk about his creative process, his drive and the amazing large-scale creative projects that have literally become a part of the city. These surreal, high-concept projects include suicidal furniture in Defenestration to open books in “Language of the Birds” to the delicate glass pianos of Caruso’s Dream.

When I was a kid, I used to watch Fellini films, and I found his vision of what life was like was the one that I wanted to live. Defenestration involved hanging 45 pieces of furniture outside of a building as if these pieces of furniture are climbing out of the windows and seeking their own fortune. Language of the Birds was inspired by the flocking patterns of pigeons that fly in the nearby Washington Square Park and between the buildings. Caruso’s Dream is 13 glass pianos hanging over a sidewalk with pulsing light dancing through this piano constellation, synced up to the sound of Enrico Caruso’s singing. Caruso had this dream in 1906 when he woke up, right when the earthquake hit. Caruso’s Dream, I imagined, was the image that came to his mind as he was approaching that window