The installation Sneeze embodies many of these characteristics. Upon entering the gallery space, the spectator encounters a dimly lit set comprised of a privacy window faced by an aluminum lectern. The glass of the window presents the image of Dean standing at the door of a studio. A microphone is positioned at either side of the lectern. It is a scene in waiting. The ready microphones, positioned for use by a speaker standing at the lectern before the screen, provide the clue as to how to engage with the work. In speaking into one of the two microphones, the spectator activates a projection. Each microphone cues a specific projection consisting of six consecutive still images, followed by a moving sequence on DVD. These scenes are viewable from both sides of the glass. Their activation, however, requires a vigorous voice prompt, and the image freezes when the voice activation is discontinued, or its volume is too low. One sequence presents a male figure (Dean) in a park setting who suddenly turns and walks away, as if fleeing or departing from someone offscreen, before abruptly falling with his body in spasm. The other scene is set in a studio. A figure (Dean) proceeds toward a desk, takes a magazine from one of its drawers and, with his back towards the viewer, engages in a brisk, repetitive action that causes his body to move and jerk. The spectator's voice-prompts move each of the sequences along the course of the six images, but eventually the viewer's ability to prompt the next image is replaced by a film sequence that cannot be stopped. This occurs at the specific moment when the figure in the projected scene has lost body control: from what appears to be an epileptic seizure in the outdoor scene and from a presumed orgasm in the studio. Like a sneeze, epilepsy and orgasm are occurrences wherein a bodily momentum and action takes over any recourse of will. The participant in Sneeze loses control over the projected scene coincident with the figure on the screen losing control. At the end of the DVD sequence, the glass surface is suddenly transparent for a few seconds, and the viewers on either side of the screen are put in view of one another.

In Sneeze, Dean requires the viewer to navigate several levels of discretion in order to participate in the work. Before exposing himself in the two scenes of vulnerability, the artist calls upon a parallel commitment from the participant, who must also perform, must also be put on view, and, when the glass clears, may also be rendered vulnerable and exposed. Even those who simply watch others giving verbal prompts at the lectern participate in the scene when they are 'caught looking' at the end when the glass turns transparent. But to take an active role in 'producing' the scene requires an applied intentionality, signalled even by the necessity to reach the body across the lectern toward the fixed microphone, as well as by the volume and persistence of voice. Yet even as Dean establishes barriers that slow the process of his self- exposure in the work, he holds no control over what the participant might say (or chant, or sing) in order to move the sequence along-or to play to a crowd. There is no qualifying the character of spectatorial engagement with the unfolding scenes.