Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)
Sulkowicz with mattress on campus October 2014
Artist	Emma Sulkowicz
Year	Created in September 2014
Type	Endurance art, performance art
Subject	Sulkowicz carrying 50lb twin mattress on Columbia University campus
Location	Upper Manhattan, New York City

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. 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, December 2014

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.

Allegatations, university investigation

Sulkowicz's complaint

The incident took place in August 2012, on the first day of Sulkowicz's sophomore year. She and the accused had had consensual sex on two previous occasions. Sulkowicz complains that the accused anally raped her during their third sexual encounter, which began as consensual, alleging that he hit her, then choked her and pinned her down, while she struggled and told him to stop. The accused maintains that the sex was entirely consensual and disputes that he was violent.

Sulkowicz did not report the incident initially, saying she was reluctant to deal with the trauma. After she discussed it with two women who said the accused had also sexually assaulted them, the three filed complaints in April 2013. The accused said the charges, all brought within days of each other, were the result of collusion and are fraudulent. In Sulkowicz's case, the university found the accused "not responsible" after a hearing in October 2013. Her request for an appeal was denied the following month.

Sulkowicz filed a police report in May 2014, but decided not to pursue charges saying it would be "too draining". The Columbia Spectator controversially published the accused's name that month. The editors argued that it would have been "irresponsible to keep his name hidden", after he had been at the center of of three sexual assault complaints and was the subject of fliers posted around campus. According to the accused's lawyer, the accused had a meeting with two assistant district attorneys in August 2014, and was later told that no charges would be brought.

In February 2015 the accused showed messages that had passed between him and Sulkowicz to journalist Cathy Young. They included apparently friendly Facebook messages Sulkowicz sent him between August and October 2012, after the alleged assault. She also sent text messages to him in March 2013 suggesting a meeting, but did not pursue it. Sulkowicz confirmed that the messages were genuine. She told writer Julie Zeilinger that she had sent the messages because she was "upset and confused," and wanted to discuss the incident with the accused to gain some understanding.

Complaints by other students

A second woman accused the student of emotional abuse and non-consensual sex during a months-long relationship. After the complainant said she was "exhausted by the barrage of questions" and stopped responding to emails over the summer months, the university ruled against her in July 2013. A third woman filed a complaint alleging that the accused had groped her at a party. This complaint was initially upheld, and he was given disciplinary probation, but in October 2013 the decision was overturned on appeal. In early February a male student, also a senior at Columbia, alleged that in 2011 the student had sexually assaulted him during a conversation. According to him, he did not file a complaint until learning about Sulkowicz's statements in the fall of 2014. This case has not been heard yet.

Title IX complaint

In April 2014, Sulkowicz, along with 22 other students, filed a federal Title IX complaint against Columbia and Barnard College, stating that these universities had mishandled their sexual assault complaints. Sulkowicz says in response to her complaint, she was repeatedly asked how anal sex without lubrication is physically possible, saying she was met with not only skepticism but also "disturbing ignorance".

In January 2015, the U.S. Department of Education announced that Columbia was under federal investigation for possible violation of its Title II and IX obligations.

Sulkowicz has criticized her school for being "more concerned about their public image than keeping people safe." In an open letter in the Columbia Spectator, Sulkowicz's parents said that "the investigation, hearing, and appeals process that followed her complaint to the University were painfully mishandled."

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)

Rules of engagement

Sulkowicz with the rules of engagement, Watson Hall

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 Senator Kristen Gillibrand invited Sulkowicz to the 2015 State of the Union Address.

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. 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 called it "one of the most important artworks of the year", while Hilary Clinton said "that image should haunt all of us". Sulkowicz received the National Organization for Women's Susan B. Anthony Award and the Feminist Majority Foundation's Ms. Wonder Award for the piece.

The accused described the work 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, since Sulkowicz's protest serves as her senior thesis, it is being supervised by a Columbia faculty member.

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".