My recent work attempts to address ethical issues through aesthetic experiences. In room-to-city-sized installations, I invite new engagements between public audiences and current events. I produce scenarios -- a wall of posted ultimatums, a karaoke machine of famous oration, or a mock rocket-based theater of war -- that implicate a viewer-cum-participant in contemporary/historic trajectories of consequence. The context of these engagements, typically text-based, is sampled from primary, historic sources. Their form I appropriate from the familiar contemporary cultural and political landscape. Distant occurences are thus re-animated, re-lived and possibly redressed.

I like to consider myself a citizen artist. My project is, in many ways, continuous with the tradition of the monument. I am interested in the potential of harnessing material to ritualize memory, produce identity, and inspire action. However, I seek to re-distribute this power and unhinge its claim to truth. By enlisting the viewer as a participant-agent, I hope to encourage him/her to locate personal meaning within collective discourse.

At present, my effort has been distinctly American. The United States is the terrain, physical and historical, with which I am most familiar, but also, given this country's leading role in world affairs, a ready target for an investigation into the meeting of authority and responsibility. My strategy and tactics are adaptable to other locales, as my concerns are, I believe, universal.