Dollhouse City Lift Bridge

Photos of the Richardson brothers Dollhouse City taken by their mommy Nell Richardson, except the last image by the Richardson brothers. Dollhouse City is a Duluth-based psychogeographical freakout representing the city and oh yeah the universe in fractal miniature. It is our joint toy collection plus the toys of my adult daughter which I never discarded, including most of the dollhouses. This three-sided collection was displayed locally at many of Sarah Heimer’s Dioramarama shows.

Aesthetic criticism of our early toy set-ups included that they were merely a display. That spawned years of private urban planning experimentation, concretizing into the modern Dollhouse City, a living breathing installation taking over my duplex much like the Merzbau took over Kurt Schwitters‘ house in Hanover, Germany until it was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943. Dollhouse City, which our mother recently mischaracterized as a toy room (lol), is ringed by mirrors at eye level multiplying its horizon to infinity. Within, one finds bridges, towers, urban and rural environments, in vertiginous perspectives. I emerge from Dollhouse City wondering how long I’ve been in there. I lose things in Dollhouse City I never find again. Like real life it is an environment of endless conflict, betrayal and resistance — a multiversal total war, a 4th-grade imaginarium differing in no way from Homer’s epics. One can look into it and find every cruelty expressed in the innocent form of children’s toys.