2021
Dimensions: Variable
Single channel Video Installation with Audio
Duration: 2:26 (loop)
 
In this single channel video piece, random GIF’s downloaded from the internet are inserted into photo stills of a distressed fence surrounding  a vacant lot. 
 
The GIF file is a MEME of connective tissue, replicated and widely shared through social media. As it has inadvertently become an ephemeral means of social bonding, operating within minuscule yet infinite moments of repetitive gestures, and gaffes, within them are hopes for  recognition through remunerative clicks, downloads, and widespread monetization. Along with the embedded GIF’s are the bifurcated text from the historian Timothy Snyder’s book, “The Road to Unfreedom”. This inserted text is the result of eliminating nearly all of the words from a page of the first chapter  in “The Road to Unfreedom”, almost Buddhist in its reflection upon the sanctity of the present moment of political and cultural polarization.

This work was exhibited at the Tashmnoo Springs Pumping Station in the group exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance" in  September of 2021. The Tashmoo Springs Pumping Station is a historic waterworks facility in on  Martha's Vineyard. The town stopped using the Tashmoo Spring facility as its primary water supply in 1971.  The building and surrounding land became listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.