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The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, and Poverty
11:10 min., color, sound, DV
(Production still, digital photograph #1)
2006 |
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The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, and Poverty
11:10 min., color, sound, DV
(Production still, digital photograph #2)
2006 |
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The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, and Poverty
11:10 min., color, sound, DV
(Production still, digital photograph #3)
2006 |
Within my art practice, I am interested in employing strategies that obtain a cultural hijacking. In developing my practice I attempt to seize moments from stable existences or situations in order to derail the normative into a state of schizophrenic inquiry. Through this cultural seizure, at times forcible, the attempt for a compelling diversion (manifested through sound and vision) is the main goal that is at stake in the negotiation between art and viewer.
The decision making process in my art is completely relative to the subject matter. That is, if a visual narrative best suits the dialogue I attempt to create, then video and film are the routes I take that lead towards my objective. If theater and performance inform the work, then those elements become the roots for such said explorations. At times, drawing and objects are better suited to represent the content of the artwork.
Currently, my practice has led me to research how states and systems of power negotiate their dominance. I have explored how the military uses propaganda and forms of narrative to manipulate and assimilate. An example of this research has been manifested through a sculpture titled Yellow Ribbon Blues (2005) that consisted of an air puppet, much in the essence of street advertisements, which was made of military camouflage tarp and sewn together to represent an anomorphic symbol. The air puppet is to be inseminated in a public space, preferably near a military recruiting station, and functions as a humorous exaggeration within the dialogue of current military methods of recruitment.
A more recent work titled The Agitators are Ignorance, Power, and Poverty is a one-channel video piece that depicts social unrest as a reactionary method towards the mishandling of social order and the incompetence of the state. The narrative of this video is loosely based on the student massacre that occurred in Mexico City in Tlatelolco (October 2,1968). Within this narrative, puppetry and performance are employed as forms of visual representation that have the potential to "sneak by" as being non-threatening forms of entertainment.
I am interested in a type of puppetry that uses its form and aesthetics to deliver a message that can be read superficially as being silly and nonsensical, but the undertone being more devastating in the afterthought. In this video, puppetry not only acts as the form for which the content is disseminated, but is also used as a powerful metaphor for power, control, desire, failure, and master-slave relations.
Through reenactment and recreation, the question of dissidence as an answer to dissatisfaction is asked. "The Agitators" illustrates that despite development, movements must continue to fight against the politics that were practiced in 1968, as well as the politics of our times.
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