I would like to use this residency as an opportunity to develop a piece about the complexity and contradiction of the true face of freedom, in relation to the current wikileaks media fiasco. This would be a video installation piece in which I would edit interviews with Julian Assange to simulate him reciting a quote from Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom. The quote reads:
“The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself.”
Paired with the sound of a person eating an apple, I hope to subtly evoke the association with the story of Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden fruit, which to my understanding is a story of coming of age. As humans we simultaneously wish to be nurtured and taken care of by a greater power/person, while at the same time we aspire to be free and independent, and rebel against greater powers/persons in our various experiences in life. We are often presented with the challenge/opportunity to see reality for what it is (eating the forbidden fruit) and draw our own conclusions. That recurring experience is a cycle of acquiring perspective and independent thought.
The uncanny sound of an apple being eaten, underscores Assange’s speech, also connotes a complex associating of him eating and simultaneously being eaten. Alluding to the current media obsession with vilifying him, while at the same time exposing themselves and the lack of true investigative journalism at our age of consolidated corporate media. I am not quite sure about the object of environment I would like this video projection to “live in.” I would be grateful for the opportunity to explore and be challenged in the context of this residency while making and resolving this piece.
