Surveying The Damage

My MFA project considers Spring Valley, a formerly used defense site in Washington, DC, which developed chemical weapons in World War I, and now hosts a matrix of top-end bureaucrats, elected government officials, university institutions, developers, ambassadors, and wealthy families. A series of poltergeist-like chemical episodes have alerted the residents to the pervasiveness of residual chemicals and man-made objects in the area, and have forced physical and psychological investigations into this palimpsest of the militaristic and then residential control of the land. I grew up alongside the unfolding drama in Spring Valley and in this project, have positioned myself within the site, navigating a confusing space between cultural memory, personal memory, and historical discourse . How does that space of memory utilize the past and the present to ignite one another? How does memory stay relevant as it is represented by personal and cultural products? How can the artworks produced in this project call attention to themselves as “technologies of memory,” as objects, images, and representations that give voice and meaning to personal memory by participating on the public stage that enacts cultural memory? The heart of this project explores a certain low-lying despair in contemporary subjectivities, and traces its roots to demands on the neoliberal individual, anxieties regarding the pace and ubiquity of technology and institutional power, as well as depression. I have considered how this despair is created and propagated, normalized and neutralized, but also how such an affective state is validated and what sorts of events and circumstances might forward these feelings of vulnerability, impotence, hopelessness, and caution.

The project manifested itself in a thesis paper, a gallery exhibition, and a short film.

gallery installation photos:

detail photos of work in the show:

details of “A Fantastic Way To Make The Night BUZZ By”

for details on the construction of this machine, click here

“Rise Full of Fleas” is based on a play by Sarah Kane, entitled: 4:48 Psychosis. The play speaks directly to the disenchantment from which I have been working. This video requires Quicktime 7 (free download here).
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