I’ve got the world on a string
Sitting on a rainbow
Got the string around my finger—
What a world, what a life, I’m in love.

The opening line of Peggy Lee’s I’ve Got the World on a String, recorded in 1953, becomes the recorded backdrop for Implicated—a kinetic light sculpture that repositions the song’s buoyant declaration within a far more ambiguous frame. What once suggested joy and self-possession now takes on a darker cast, transformed by the sculpture’s choreography.

Built into the shell of a 1950s radio, the piece becomes a kind of stage set—or a cabinet of memory. At its center, a disembodied hand turns slowly in a circle, holding a dangling male figure by a literal string. The metaphor is made material. Delight becomes domination.

Above, a semicircle of hand-colored photographic cards—semi-erotic portraits once tucked into French cigarette packs around 1900—fans outward like a cabaret frozen in time. Porcelain nurses flank the upper chamber, impassive and alert. And in front of a mesh screen, miniature perfume bottles glow softly, evoking faded rituals of glamour and allure.

As the hand rotates, the song plays on:

Life is a beautiful thing
As long as I hold the string
I’d be a silly so-and-so
If I should ever let go

But here, the lyric falters. The narrative, once innocent, now underscores a dynamic of possession. The sculpture holds its figure in suspension, not affection.

Implicated draws on the Dada tradition of assemblage and détournement, recontextualizing found materials to subvert their original meanings. Its motion, sound, and theatrical framing recall mid-20th-century experiments in kinetic art and object theater. Its layered narrative invites reflection on power, control, and the use of symbolic imagery.