Anarchy Does Not Come From Power
An Installation in three rooms
Room
One: Sheltered Room
In this room you can see what might be called 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.