I’d lost count of the amount of times I’d heard the opening words ‘You have the right to remain silent’… and yet, I couldn’t remember the whole statement exactly as it should be said. Why is that? I watch endless amounts of crime dramas on TV and I love to read a good murder mystery… but getting the words in the right order exactly as they are said, is not that easy.
‘Right to Remain’ is a continuation of the statement theme. The work explores the nature of familiar statements, which have been recited in a repetitive nature, carefully rehearsed but not necessarily understood. It raises a question mark over this actual understanding. Do certain communications become so familiar that they lose their significance?
Do we actually understand our rights?
On Sunday, I’m travelling up to Leeds to drop off my work at the Basement Arts Project for the exhibition SPEAKEASY: art in an age of prohibition : http://ageofprohibition.wordpress.com/
I had been working on a series of images about words – how they are used, mass produced or misinterpreted, so the brief for SPEAKEASY was quite appealing to me.
I will be exhibiting Declaration.
I became interested in this particular document because of its mass produced nature. The original July 4 United States Declaration of Independence manuscript was said to have been lost, and therefore all copies that we are aware of today have allegedly been derived from this original document.
After copies were widely distributed to the public, the initial purpose in announcing independence was ignored.
The work, like the document, is so mass produced that it fades and loses its original significance, yet the paper and wood are stacked and overlaid like documentaries, waiting to be unlocked.
The repetitive nature of the words lead us to lose concentration and drift off so that background sounds begin to interfere and break through.
Lost in the script, in the tangle of words, is the statement of human rights:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
