click here to see the 15 minute screen loop

Permission Structures *, 2018

46 x 74 x 16" Wood, roll out hobby turf/grass, monitor, 15 minute video

Video: rotating quotes excerpted from television, film, literature, comic and video game narratives, intercut with slow motion moving water.

The billboard rising above screens quotes from authoritative sounding sources. Each excerpt of prudent
prose is culled from characters from film, television, literature and video games. Meditations on the
militarization of police, the nature of democracy and broader body politic are interspersed with slow motion
footage of flowing water, and are screened on a billboard above. Beneath it, a pixelated terrain resembling a three
dimensional topographic map evokes a hybrid between a real-life Minecraft landscape and a model train diorama.

This work investigates how we absorb moral lessons more readily from fictional figures than from real-world leaders.
Fictional characters are locked in time, shaped entirely by their creators, the do not evolve, falter, or face scandal.
While both real and fictional heroes can suffer misinterpretation, fictional heroes never make mistakes or exhibit
foibles unintended by their creator. Much like beloved historical figures, we can only make our assessment of a
fictional character from the limited information that we are given.

Liberated from liable, fictional characters have a magnified influence and potential for propaganda,
since potential questionable motivations and ad hominem attack is not possible owing to the preexisting
architecture of their construction within a fixed fictional universe. It is from these trustworthy avatars that
we are uniquely able to take advice and guidance, much akin to how a previous generation believed in the
endorsement from a physician in 1950s advertising the health and safety of Camel Cigarettes. By placing these
messages on a billboard, the work references the propagandistic nature of the visual language of advertising.

Taking the notion of the model universe as a point of departure, I insert the not so subtle guidance of
fictional leaders, interspersed with slow motion flowing water. Partly an intuitive decision, the water suggests the
overwhelming flood of information we encounter daily. Slowing it down invites reflection on its its volume and
immensity, its rhythm, and perhaps its meaning. Images depicting the sublime are a longstanding trope of religious
scripture and occasionally on motivational posters. The digital compression artifacts embedded in the footage
raise questions of fidelity, suggesting a blurred line between natural documentation and simulation, mirroring
uncertain authenticity of the quotes themselves.

*The Term Permission Structures has its origin in advertising as a rhetorical device [/structure] that would allow a consumer
to make a particular purchasing decision. i.e. you worked hard this year, and you deserve a nice vacation to Orlando.
The term was popularized by the Obama Administration, when the President and his surrogates used the term to describe
arguments and rationalizations that someone might be receptive to in order to come around to your position.