draft for artist statement

Freedom Trap

“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.”  from Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm

News bureaus embody society’s public quest for myths and idols. They provide them to the public, anoint them, chase them, erect them, destroy them, rediscover them…
Traditionally we look to news sources to gain “objective insight,” but with the recent flood of information on the internet and our ability to cross reference sources and opinions, it has become evident that news sources also act as a symbol/myth-making machines. For example; Angelina Jolie, Julian Assange, Sarah Palin… Freedom Trap is inspired by the recent rupture in our common consciousness, created by the wikileaks releases, which have simultaneously exposed political and financial corruption, as well as exposed the current lack of true investigative journalism. And yet even with these new found insights, we are quick to forget, bury and move on to the next news flash, pacifying our existential angst by providing/seeking distractions in mediated gossip. The piece, in the shape of a mobius strip, is a metaphor for our awareness of history. The viewer has a privileged “objective” aerial view of the whole piece at once, just like the illusion of today’s news, which gives you all the news at once, at the tip of your fingers, or a click of a button.  But the quote and the entrapping shape reveal a parallel truth, that no matter how much we know, “people are trapped in history, and history trapped in them” (James Baldwin). The paper strip lives between public bathroom hand wiping paper and a strip of dry skin/meat, evoking the inherent violence and fragility and ordinariness of cycles of human history.  Something like Hanna Ardent’s “the banality of evil.” The hand written text has an urgency that the printed texts lacks, connoting anonymous writings on public bathroom walls, a connection to a primal version of news and human expression.