Installation and sculpture
A Question of Definition
2013 — Plaster (replica-based silicone cast), spray paint, vinyl text
The M4 type rifle (derived from the AR series of rifles, first actively used in the Vietnam war) is one of the most common and typically known assault rifles on the planet, after the mythical AK47. An American design, it has been at the core of Western/US arms manufacturing for some time - it is now an industrial design export of considerable merit.
Recently, a bank robber was killed by Swedish police after fleeing, carrying an automatic rifle. Only later was it discovered it was a replica.
While making these models I was under suspicion and some minor investigation. Not even as a “free” artist, the symbol could be distanced from reality.
Chair for Democracy
2013 — Chair, saw
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Chair for History
2013 — Chair, baseball bats
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Children of Zen
2013 — Folding chairs, lighting
In zen buddhism the reading of koans is central to the practice. Here one reads what seems like impossible statements, taking a great deal of time delving into deep introspection in order to understand them. With this spiritual practice in mind I have created a work for our linguistic predicament: Where not even the encouragement to stop disbelieving can be entirely separated from actually still believing in its opposite. Disbelief is therefore not just destabilizing, it's also unstable itself, as a concept.
Clock for Progress
2013 — Wall clock without hands, stethoscope, crushed velvet
Our modern age might have begun with the advent of the clock and linear, standardized time, community clocks and the instituting of timezones. Now, the world is highly synchronized. The management of time and the division of time into currency and payment is now at the core of current monetary procedures.
“Kairos” is the ancient Greek concept of time as being an instance of “right time”, that something is destined to happen - this is sometimes linked to experiential levels of being. To “think time”, slicing and planning the future, and to “pass time” are divided activities under a clock-based regime.
Every Last Meal
2013 — Shelving units, canned food, can opener, spoon
Humanitarianism is usually coupled with the acutely poor: A status that is systematically bracketed and named. While researching food as a token of power, I am exploring an abject middle-ground between contemporary, mainly Western, money-fueled survivalism - preempting, sheltering, stockpiling - and the politics that pressure that desire.
There is also a morbid play of words in the title. Firstly, last meals are served to those sentenced to death. Botulinum toxin is a potent nerve agent, so much so that it could form a bioterrorism weapon. It can also, less dramatically but equally dangerously, emanate from something as innocuous as a dented can, transforming the last vestige of survival into its opposite. Will your survivalism kill you?
Rubber Bullet
2013 — Repainted ammunition transport case, silk, silicone, unfired 7.62 caliber brass cases for automatic rifles.
Rubber bullets are used by law enforcement and other security providers as a means to deter and to measuredly inflict “non-lethal” violence. They look like round pellets and do not penetrate the skin, rather bruising a small area of the body instead.
These bullets, however, are size-correct replicas of real carbine/automatic rifle bullets presented in a military transport case. They are also flat at the top like controversial hollow-point ammunition, which normally (with a metal bullet) would expand and explode within a target, crushing its way through tissue and bone.
Something for Someone, Somewhere, Sometime
2013 — Briefcase, literature (The Koran, The Holy Bible, The Origin of Species, The Art of Rhetoric, The New York Times), envelopes, pens, paper glue, tape roll, foam, tweezers, scissors, plastic straps, leather gloves.
Traveling and transport and all their prerequisite paraphernalia are ubiquitous. With the culture of fear, suspicion is directed at the concealed and that which is out of the ordinary. Yet, the ordinary excites great fear precisely because it allows uncomfortable variations of familiarity to appear and its debris to float away like ghosts, festering in fantasies and delusions. An entire poetics of marginal horror can be instituted.
