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Using
an auto-ethnographic approach to personal history as a window
on the world, my new work explores marginal contexts, like
storage facilities, highways, trailer parks, and transitional
visual information, as in, the information that you may pass
on a street but not openly acknowledge. Earlier in my career,
I made performances on street corners, in shopping malls,
and public squares in various parts of the world. In part,
this work addressed the commodification process and hinged
on a Marxist critique based on the Critical Theory of the
Frankfurt School. I grew up in trailer parks where my first
homes had wheels under them and my father was a long haul
trucker. From those experiences I learned that an inherent
movement of things and people informs my understanding of
contemporary life, and I find potential in the visual information
that is understated, ubiquitous, and often unacknowledged
as a carrier of meaning. I'm interested in wresting meaning
out of poor and decrepit materials, things not considered,
yet very present. I have worked with, for example, public
bulletin boards, treating them as a form of spontaneous collage.
Materially I'm working with the idea of finding the extraordinary
in the ordinary. Mining meaning where it appears that there
is none.
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