# Chapter 7: Capitoline Wolves & Queer Rocker

[Download this chapter HERE](http://carolinewoolard.com/static/uploads/texts/art_engagement_economy_10.pdf) or BUY the book for $25 in the [US](https://miriam.shoplightspeed.com/art-engagement-economy-the-working-practice-of-car.html) or in [Europe](https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/caroline-woolard/#publication_13011).

In 2016, curator Stephanie Owens invited Caroline Woolard to do a series of projects at Cornell University for an initiative called *Abject / Object Empathies* which focused on the cultural production of empathy and explored how the objects and images people construct are shaped by interdependent relationships to others. Stephanie Owens asked: What are the ways in which art and design mediate and shape the emotional exchanges between people in tangible form?

In a series of events throughout the semester, Woolard shared her open-access kit for *Queer Rocker* and invited students to make adaptations of the rocking chair. The Rocker circulates as an open access toolkit. It was first shown at *The Very First Year*, curated by Laurel Ptak at Eyebeam in 2013, and has been modified for use by students at Cornell University, the State University of New York, Purchase, and at WeMake, a maker space in Milan, using ratchet straps, hardware, and press-fit joints. The kit is available so that anyone with a maker space can modify and produce a *Queer Rocker*. 

> #### What are the ways in which art and design mediate and shape the emotional exchanges between people in tangible form?

*Capitoline Wolves*, commissioned by Owens for the exhibition, was an installation made for conversations about masculine violence and fantasies of “founding brothers.” Five tables were placed in a pentagonal formation under the grand dome of Sibley Hall at Cornell University. Each table resembles the she-wolf that raised Romulus and Remus; the cherry-wood table has bent hind legs of steel, distended udders of stoneware, and a hanging mirror for a face. The she-wolves’ breasts were filled with water from Ithaca’s gorges. Throughout the installation, visitors placed a delicate bowl with a single hole in the water when their conversations began. When the bowl sunk to the bottom, it marked the duration of a topic of conversation at the table.

> `An object of art creates a public capable of finding pleasure in its beauty. Production, therefore, not only produces an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.`
>
> `— Karl Marx`

![](https://2124219949-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MAr-nsYkhWQckl0Nr8A%2F-MFRcB9Uur7b1i_HvNeq%2F-MFRcaH5dLIybLbGpmcZ%2Fch7%20process%20diagram.png?alt=media\&token=e7d18dae-a4ca-46c2-9fdf-9a6c2454d357)