"YOU WILL WITNESS MY ACTS 1:8."
Exhibition: Salvage Utopia, 1991. "You will witness..." was created for the exhibition, "Salvage Utopia." Having worked mostly with old things, used objects, things thrown out, lost, abandoned, I am intimate with the activity and ideas of salvage. But addressing the concept of utopia I was uncomfortable determining what to salvage for others. The most important notion of utopia is in its manifestation in each of us. What feels appropriate is to inspire and remind that utopia is self-made and emerges only from one's own critical reflection and vision. It is a hopefulness that each of us can and must actively imagine. Utopia and salvaging is one in the same; a process of inventive beauty emerging from and generating our various and distinct selves. "You will witness..." is a rearrangement of the text on a rosary card -- something I found in a twist of fate. It read: "You will be my witnesses. ACTS 1:8" I salvaged and reworked the words to read: "You will witness my ACTS 1:8." A rubber stamp was made. This text is stamped on the back of each of the 300 mirrors which travel in an old suitcase. This gesture is intended to be reminscent and evocative of the practice of the traveling bible saleman of the dust bowl days. For the purposes of exhibiting, the mirrors have been stacked next to the suitcase in a single column measuring 4" x 6" x 47." The minimalism of this tower of store-bought Chinese mirrors situated beside the suitcase challenges separatist tendencies of "high" and "low" practice whether it be in art or activism. Had the text been altered to read: "You will witness your ACTS 1:8," the message would have seemed instructional, even authoritarian. Had the text been altered to read: "I will witness my ACTS 1:8," the activity would remain internal, collapsed, solitary. Instead I invite you to see yourself as activist and witness, as both image and repository of change, talking to ourselves, hopefully urging, not sentencing.