Decoys

 

I began this body of work by constructing models of the private residences of high-ranking members of the Bush administration, based on satellite imagery. The “live” video image, received and displayed in an adjoining room on small monitors (or in a grid in a mobile command unit, pictured above), is convincing—or at least compelling--in its grainy, black and white, abbreviated description. The fragile and hermetic relationship amongst the object of surveillance, the observer, and the mediating technology in this work mirrors the deeply flawed and politicized contemporary process by which intelligence is gathered, analyzed, and utilized. More recent work incorporates very small models of the homes of every person in the U.S. with my name. The clumsily constructed models include just enough detail to render them plausibly for the video. Large (40 x 50") prints of the models reveal this lack of attention to detail, at least regarding what seems to be pictured, but do, in fact, detail the truth of the pure simulacrum itself.