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A set of artworks explore relations between American ideologies and their material effects:
*Desktop viewing is recommended, high detail versions may not display properly on mobile devices.
We Need A Symbol, 2022, video still and quotation from Ghostbusters 2, video still in negative from anti-mask rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall, two-layer print
In late May 2020, anti-mask protesters rally in front of Los Angeles City Hall to protest the Covid lockdown.
In Ghostbusters 2 (1989), the ghostbusters are unable to enter the Metropolitan Museum of Art as it has been shielded with red ectoplasm. Working to solve the problem, Harold Ramis as Dr. Egon Spengler concludes, "We need [elongated pause]... a symbol." The ghostbusters then use their ectoplasmic weapons to animate the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty carries them from Liberty Island through Manhattan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Liberty's torch smashes through the glass ceiling of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enables the ghostbusters to enter.
The challenge with symbols is their propensity for misuse.
Derivation, Republic for the United States of America (?), 2022, images and text from the Facebook account of Forrest Gordon Clark, satellite imagery of the Holy Fire on August 13, 2018
Forrest Gordon Clark is accused and likely guilty of starting the Holy Fire on August 6, 2018 in Cleveland National Forest. He was a part of a fringe conspiracy group called the Republic for the United States of America whose goal is to "rebuild our Republic in the image that our Founding Fathers first established." The evidentiary artwork combines images and texts from his Facebook posts with satellite imagery of the fire he most likely started. The left side images allocate one post per year, 2012-2017, while the right side includes only material from 2018 leading up to the fire being set.
Derivation, Crabapple First Baptist Church, Milton, GA, 2022, printed text on glass, collaged prints, Google Maps directions, screenshots
Robert Aaron Long is the suspect in the 2021 spa shootings in Atlanta, GA who pleaded guilty to four of the eight deaths that occurred. He was, for many years, a member of the Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, GA. The artwork brings together a set of verses cited in the “What We Believe” section of the 2017 and 2021 versions of the church’s website with directions from Google Maps drawing a path from the location where the gun used was purchased to where the shootings occurred on the same day. An image of the church’s exterior taken from Google street view is pasted at the church’s map location, while “X3 Watch” is a cell phone application cited by the 2017 version of the church website which members can use to surveil each others’ internet-pornography viewing habits. Simultaneously, Long’s parents provided his location to police using a cell phone application they used to track their son’s location and had kicked him out of their house for sexual addiction. According to its present website, the church voted to merge with another church in June 2022 to become Milton Community Church.
A series of diagrammatic visualizations of 5-minute live stream data captures of the entire Twitter network tagging @realDonaldTrump on:
1.) June 14, 2020, Donald Trump's birthday, Flag Day (above).
2.) October 2, 2020, the day Donald Trump announces on Twitter he has been diagnosed with Covid.
3.) November 7, 2020 the day Donald Trump is declared by the media to have lost the election.
4.) January 8, 2020, the day Twitter bans Donald Trump's user account, two days after the insurrection at the United States Capitol.
Additional artworks are available for viewing and/or discussion upon request.
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