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Project Statements
Battle of Seattle
Today, the wealthy use corporate
globalization to plunder the world through debt payments, unfair
trade policies and privatization. These images are from the World
Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle in 1999, when tens
of thousands of citizens came together to call attention to the
problems symbolized by the WTO, including environmental degradation,
sweatshop labor and widespread global poverty. After protesters
successfully shut down the first day of meetings, police in riot
gear used increasingly heavy-handed and indiscriminate force
to control the streets of Seattle. It felt like a war zone, a
surreal experience in modern America.
These images feature riot
police, the swashbucklers of the new piracy, violent enforcers
of aggressive free trade. Since Seattle, nearly every high-level
trade meeting takes place behind a massive militarized security
operation or in a remote, isolated resort, protecting the captains
of piracy from the people whose collective wealth is being
stolen. Mission Butterfly
Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly is a
classic story representing early East-West relations. It advanced
problematic racist and sexist myths and fantasies that persist
consciously and unconsciously, about submissive Asian females
desperate for the love of powerful white Westerners, despite
mistreatment and betrayal.
In this installation, profiles were
created for Madame Butterfly and B.F. Pinkerton in an online
dating website, as residents of the Mission in present-day San
Francisco. Exhibition visitors can adopt their identities, reading
and responding to messages sent to them.
The installation hijacks
an old story and a contemporary medium, internet dating, to examine
how Butterfly plays out in modern relationships and feeds modern
stereotypes.
Though Butterfly’s problems may be obvious to some contemporary audiences, the
attitudes represented still appear to subconsciously influence people's desires
and attractions. Online dating is a public place where these attitudes are documented,
and where it is
socially acceptable to have racial preferences. |
Untitled 1, Untitled
2, and Untitled
3 from Battle of Seattle, 1999 (printed 2003), gelatin silver
prints.
Click thumbnail to view larger image. |
