Abstract
I would describe myself as a cultural worker who is fascinated with the artifacts, histories and mythologies we construct about each other as individuals and as societies, whether in the form of family snapshots or official public monuments. Although my obsession with the distortions of perception and representation is based in profoundly personal experience, much of my work over the last 10 years has focused on representation, as encountered in mainstream media and in public space. My thinking on these issues has also been shaped by a number of academics who have challenged canonical traditions within their own disciplines. Among them are poet Adrienne Rich, in essays such as Writing as Re-Vision [1] and Notes Towards a Politics of Location [2], and historian Howard Zinn, whose A People's History of the United States (1980) [3] re-writes U.S. history from the perspective of blacks, women, Indians and poor laborers of various ethnicities. In this work and in earlier work, Zinn called for an overtly value-laden historiography that will the pretensions of governments to either neutrality or beneficence . . . [and] expose the ideology that pervades our culture-using 'ideology' in Mannheim's sense: rationale for the going order [4]. Zinn goes on to describe various rhetorical strategies that mask ideological bias. In a similar vein, communications theorist Herbert Schiller has helped me clarify my critique of U.S. media news. In his book The Mind Managers, Schiller enumerates Five Myths That Structure Content: (1) The Myth of Individualism and Personal Choice, (2) The Myth of Neutrality, (3) The Myth of Unchanging Human Nature, (4) The Myth of Absence of Social Conflict and (5) The Myth of Media Pluralism. In other words, we as contemporary news consumers are encouraged to believe that our media diet is varied, balanced and objective [5]. Much of my work has been an effort to challenge these beliefs, especially by counteracting certain pervasive media practices that Schiller describes: the fragmentation of information (through advertising, sound bites, etc.) and the omission of historical context. These practices discourage understanding of causal connections and responsibilities. My work, on the contrary, acknowledges-indeed, emphasizes-historical connections, multiple voices, conflicting perspectives and ideological bias through a strategy of juxtaposition designed to provoke thoughtful response. My original attraction to digital technology was (and remains) substantially based on the almost magical ease with which it allows me to play with the shifting and blending of images and text-in other words, digital technology allows the materialization of linkages in time and space that enhance understanding. Whereas in the past I might have employed electronic photocopier or darkroom techniques, I now rely primarily on my computer to facilitate the processes of image conversion, scaling and layering. The following works, which I created since 1984 using various technologies, demonstrate a continuity of strategies in relationship to meaning. These strategies transcend, although they also may be facilitated by, particular technologies.
Published Version
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