Anarchy Does Not Come From Power
An Installation in three rooms
Room One: Sheltered Room
In this room you can see what I call a sheltered lifestyle. The numerous
glasses around the room suggest they have plenty to go around and possibly
have guests often. The stereo and entertainment system are examples that they
have time and money for entertainment. The Slimfast can show a concern with
losing weight and physical appearance. There is a surveillance camera 90
occupants are concerned with security issues.
The only information sources are the white encyclopedias and the daily
conservative newspapers on the table. You can look at the encyclopedia entry
if seated on the sofa and read the entry Anarchism, while reading it is hard
to not notice the images being flashed on the TV screen are computer hackers,
war footage, and Los Angeles Uprisings. These images and reading can
captivate you to sit for a few minutes, long enough to notice the lump in the
sofa, which is a rifle hidden under the cushions. The rifle is there to keep
the savages at bay, or to keep the images in the TV and away from this nice
American dream-like atmosphere, by force if necessary that represents the
uneasy feeling right wing conservatives and other fanatics are feeling, threatened of losing their false superiority in
America.
Room Two: Hall of Mirrors
This room represents personal struggles with image I am faced with
everyday. The mirrors have CURRENT newspaper articles pasted to them, which
have representations of people of color or make reference to them. These
often are the only contact mainstream society makes with minorities,
especially in Orange County, Ca.
When I look into the mirror, I see someone completely different from
whom the articles are representing. The mirrors have been cracked to reflect
the struggle and pain associated with the identity crisis felt everyday, from
trying to live with society telling itself who these people are and their
personal constant struggle of searching for truth rather than lies and
misrepresentations.
One mirror stands without text, yet it too is cracked. This is cracked
from frustration of wanting to be recognized by a system that oppresses you.
Room Three: Anarchistic Empowerment
This room is a graphic depiction of methods being used to chip away at
society's rules today. Some are more successful than others, but all are real
and have been attempted.
The room is filled with red light, red from anger and despair filling
rejected lives. Alternative media fills a table in the center of the room,
beneath a pirate flag. You sit on an Ammunition box as bench while leafing
through titles as "get even," "The ultimate Cellular modification manual,"
and "the terrorist's handbook. "
Sounds fill the room. Squawking Citizens band radio and cassette tapes of
Timothy Leary and Ray Manzarak preaching cyberpunk and beatnik theories of
mind expansion become apparently visible, while reading files of how to make
drugs, among the scattered wealth of information.
You can see a monitor in the right corner of the room that is watching
the TV in the sheltered room. Here you recognize that you are watching
someone else's opinion on TV, which you may agree with or disagree with,
understanding the idea of who's viewpoint is watched.
There is also a monitor in the left corner of the room, which is a
computer monitor. The CPU flashes two per minute messages at you. If you are
bold enough to touch the keyboard and disrupt the messages, you learn that
there is a computer bulletin board here. This is the most immediate form of
information available today and only those who have access to computers and
current technology can utilize it. The gun hidden beneath the table is ready
for a confrontation with the one in the sheltered room, not as nice looking,
but just as deadly.
There are three loaves of bread in this room, along with an empty milk
container and an empty beer bottle. This suggests that the occupant might be
interested in sustenance rather than gluttony, and that unlike the sheltered
room someone here is trying to eat rather than fast.
I believe that this consumption is going to produce a redistribution of
power in America. as witnessed in the recent elections. The under represented
are growing in masses and will soon be the majority, and will make our
leaders admit to the problems they've created and allowed to continue
existing. Lack of respect leads to hostility, and consciousness as a
political act is step one to overcoming barriers of invisible geography.