2003/2004

Four anonymous men who work in proximity to men with greater power than they have in the worlds of business, media, art, and politics were asked questions about the men for whom they worked. The men interviewed were open in the setting of a private exchange guarded by the promise of anonymity.

Four actors recorded the transcripts, approximating the original voices, with questions and comments removed from the recordings so as to create monologues.

During the months in which these interviews were recorded, several boys between the ages of 7 and 11 (in Freudian terms, the period of latency, during which children enter the social realm and sublimate Oedipal desires), were asked one question - "What most represents power to you?" The spoken responses of 40 boys were interpreted as visual images, projected as slides in the space occupied by the voices of the adult men interviewed. Another slide component consisted of details from one famous etching by Francisco Goya, "The Dream/Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," (Capricho 43, 1799). This slide component invokes an earlier moment of aesthetic critique. Musical interludes are heard between the four dialogues - digitally re-mixed from the soundtrack of a well-known 1970s film about the Vietnam War, including both music and spoken word.

(91 slides, 2 projectors, continuous projection,audio loop, 37:00; music remixed by Maxim Kolbowski-Frampton) Images at left show installations at Secession, Vienna, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Commissioned by Secession, Vienna. Re-exhibited at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Collection MAMCO, Geneva.

Click here for Transcript Excerpts