MONUMENTS OF BARBARISM
April - May , 2022
A continuation of the Power work from 2021, this installation is in Los Angeles adjacent to the DWP. The work again attempts to address issues embedded in institutionalized power systems, using the most ubiquitous symbol of utility commonly referred to as Power that just happens to also be one of the most recognizable symbols of Christianity, itself a form of institutional Power. Employing sound and smell to bring what is comfortably benign and invisible on the outside into the private space and forcing consideration of the roll it plays in culture. The work performed primarily in isolation due to the inherent danger of active "live" wires and is only viewed historically through the ultimate form of control, photographs and video. Viewing through a wide lens of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Marxs' Base/Superstructure or T. Adorno's Minima Moralia, from which the name is derived, it ultimately takes aim at the role that monumental technology plays in enabling and even promoting civic barbarism through hidden in plain site systems.
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MONUMENTS OF BARBARISM
April - May , 2022
A continuation of the Power work from 2021, this installation is in Los Angeles adjacent to the DWP. The work again attempts to address issues embedded in institutionalized power systems, using the most ubiquitous symbol of utility commonly referred to as Power that just happens to also be one of the most recognizable symbols of Christianity, itself a form of institutional Power. Employing sound and smell to bring what is comfortably benign and invisible on the outside into the private space and forcing consideration of the roll it plays in culture. The work performed primarily in isolation due to the inherent danger of active "live" wires and is only viewed historically through the ultimate form of control, photographs and video. Viewing through a wide lens of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Marxs' Base/Superstructure or T. Adorno's Minima Moralia, from which the name is derived, it ultimately takes aim at the role that monumental technology plays in enabling and even promoting civic barbarism through hidden in plain site systems.
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Power
April 14 -21, 2021
This is an action work that took place in a house that was built in 1922 in southern Oregon. It would have received a basic single phase electrical service in the 1930s, consisting of two electrical outlets and a single light bulb and socket. It was built on land originally inhabited by Native American Takeelma before the colony, and it operated as an auto camp and Shell gas station until 1934.
Forces consideration of the historical intersection between native American and colonizing and western totems of worship as well as questions of domain, ownership, environment, and the access to both public vs private spaces. The work uses ubiquitous symbols of industrial and technological "monuments", past and present, that exist in the public sphere and have been used in the continued creation and control of culture and class by those with power.
INTERSECTION
Forced reflections of the Invisible Intersections between machine and nature.
STRETCHING RESOURCES
Performative Timber restraint collapsing awareness of environment and forced control of resources
FRAMES
Frames of observation of natural systems through industrial components and systems of demarcation.
Member/REmember
The work was sculpture that used materials specific to the industrial trades. Steel, construction, railroads, printing. The subject investigated was one of the scale and balance between humans and industrial vs natural environments.
The work was manipulated every day throughout the 6 days to emphasize non permanence and to encourage the viewer to either remember the previous days installation , or experience it as a wholly new sculpture if not seen previous.
ACCESS
Transformation of standard gallery space to challenge discussion of who has access to viewership?
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Access to spaces depending on factors of monbility,race, and socio-economics
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Lower Space appears "void" of work. Access to the "top spaces" is opaque and suppressed.
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Viewers under the sheet are "observed"
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Uses space, materials and room to change presentation of traditional modalities from a object based (sculptures) to a reflection and self observation
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Air Conditioning ( privileged experience) is above. Warm and still ambient temperature, basic utilities below
TAKE
In the spaces viewed outside the gallery, I "removed" physical mass without permission from a wall and the blacktop. The "sculptures" were placed next to their suggested "voids" to show displacement of space and perception of Authenticity, as well as giving "life" to mechanized systems and areas that are considered mundane and automatic.
DISPLAY
I then placed the "plugs" in the gallery to emphasize the displacement of space and mass, and to illustrate how perception changes authenticity. By bringing the outside in, the mundane industrial materials that we rely on for existence become elevated. Questions of displacement were attempted to be initiated. The work was changed and reduced during the 2 weeks of viewing until the collapsed into a homogenized perception of "recycling" and never ending appropriation.