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Artist Abstract-

The first stage of my process begins with my initial reaction to cultural happenings or political developments on the global, domestic, or campus level. I consider myself to be a cultural critic who responds to the things I deem unjust, by using a two-pronged socially concerned approach that is applicable on both the campus and national horizons.. Nationally, I have chosen to illuminate the way which recent media conglomeration limits and aids the formulation of public perception. Meanwhile on the campus level, I am intimately confronting the college community using postcards that directly invite the viewer to my interactive installation. Focusing on the lack of Staff representation on the Board of Trustees, my intentions are to raise awareness of the current power structure that severely restricts employee perspectives during critical decision-making here at St. Mary’s College. Overall on both levels, my work confronts the audience with social responsibility.

As a socially concerned artist my intentions are to confront as many people as possible. Locally on the campus level, my guerrilla warfare style approach involves a team of concerned people from the campus community who mass distribute my informative postcards, which directly introduce my opposition to the oppression of the Staff here at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. The currently assembled Board of Trustees directly oppresses the staff by speaking on their behalf, rather than allowing unbiased direct representation. Postcards allow me to directly and intimately invite every student, staff, faculty, and administrative member of community to the Boyden Gallery, for further analysis of this unaddressed repression of dissent. Every postcard has on it a set of instructions that can be used for viewing my community-based interactive installation. The postcard challenges the viewer to find the hidden letters contained though out the installation, and place the letters on the empty slots found on the back of the post-card). When the message is solved, the viewer can decide to sign the brief petition (on postcard) in support of the Staff’s dissent and drop it in the petition box located within my installation. The contents of the box will then be collected and forwarded to the Board of Trustees in hopes of creating a better campus community that encourages voice for all.

Meanwhile nationally, the recent approval of a Senate bill makes it easier for mega media corporations to merge. This of course could allow for even more selective news coverage, which squelches opposition or dissent. Using the same visual language and presentation that dominate our public airwaves, my intentions are to bring about questions regarding authorship and sponsorship. Who really owns the wavelengths over which major networks broadcast? The information presented over these wavelengths is funded by an powerful entity in America that has undue influence on public policy and the two party duopoly: corporations. For example, the recent decision by the CBS broadcasting organization not to show what it referred to as an “issue ad” by www.moveon.org directly illustrates suppression of dissent as it pertains to media and sponsorship. Do we really have the freedom of opinion on our once public airwaves? Money thirsty corporations have transformed our wavelengths into a daily advertising circus. The censored views expressed on our wavelengths in both reporting and commercial ads ultimately are an escort to what I like to refer to as “selective coverage.” I find that many news organizations cover headlines or events unequally; the fact of the matter is that the media often in their reporting techniques take things out contexts by simply not completing or addressing an argument. This is where my work begins. My starting point as an artist is where the media’s “selective coverage” leaves off.

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