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 culled 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
video of flowing water, and are screened on a billboard above. The base is a kind of topographic map,
fashioned out of three dimensional pixels. This arrangement is meant to evoke something between an IRL
Minecraft environment, and a model railroad diorama.

With this work I am interested in exploring how we absorb moral lessons and guidance from fictional
characters, which we cannot seem to take in when offered by our very real and mortal worldly leaders. The
reputations of fictional characters are inherently locked, frozen, and fixed owing to that they are creations of
the original authors. While real and fictional heroes can suffer misinterpretation, they never make mistakes
or exhibit foibles unintended of 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.

With this power and liberation, 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 1950’s advertising the health and safety of Camel Cigarettes. By situating
the monitor on a replica billboard structure, we are reminded, but not overwhelmed, by the potential
propagandistic nature of the display.

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 stands
in for the vast amount of knowledge rushing past us. By slowing it down, we are given the opportunity to
contemplate its volume and immensity, if not its relevance. Images depicting the sublime are a longstanding
trope of religious scripture and occasionally on motivational posters. In this case, the slow motion water has
inclusions, digital artifacts from the file compression, making it unclear whether this is a low fidelity image or
computer simulation, echoing the questionable authenticity of the interspersed quotes.

*The Term “Permission Structures” comes from advertising, and is essentially a rhetorical, logical, or
cognitive device [/structure] that would allow someone to make a particular purchasing decision. i.e. ‘you’ve
worked hard this year, and you and your family deserve a nice vacation to Orlando’. The term was also
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.