Students : BA Witkof, Ruben Dimas, Stephanie Escobar, Crystal Estrada, Sophia Hidalgo, Anet Morejon, Austin Tanner
Artist Statement:
Perception is a powerful thing. It affects, infects, and then takes control of everything it encounters. A person’s perception of an object or an event makes a far stronger impact than the objective reality of whatever is being scrutinized. A traumatic event will cause no distress if it was never per-ceived as such in the first place.
We, as a collective, have become complacent. We are pulled along blindly by the current, going with the flow. We are bombarded by so many images, so much information, that we become de-sensitized: horrific stories of human cruelty become normalized as we swipe to the next meme, the next post. Out of sight, out of mind. Like Nero, we fiddle while Rome burns.
Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom. Who has time to distill the infor-mation we receive about our present reality into knowledge about its relationship to our past in hopes of gaining the wisdom we need to shape our future? Instead, we don our masks of willful ignorance that we mistake for happiness.
The intention of Eating Crow is to reveal both the mask and what it hides. Art functions as Athena’s polished shield. Had Perseus looked Medusa directly in the eyes, he would have been petrified; unable to confront the monster. How do we take the history that we have buried and force it to be observed? How do we tear down the dam that people have unconsciously built, disrupting the flow of the current people have blindly followed? How can our suffering be forced out of mind, when it is in plain sight?
For those who wish to keep wearing the mask in order to continue their everyday lives, the mirror shines back, blinding them with the sights they are used to. Those who choose to take a deeper look within, will see.
What you see here in the Franklin Shop window in down town Ft Myers, FL, is the students’ satirical response to what they perceive to be an absurd political landscape. As they summarized, “We can write to our representatives until our fingers fall off, and call our congressmen and women until they block our numbers but this doesn’t mean that we will receive any rational response to our concerns.”
Performers (students) sat inside a store front display window. Five of them sat on tiny chairs , one stood at a podium with a paper shredder on the ground next to him and one who stood in the storefront window and waved the American flag and paraded back and forth in the window every time a document was shredded. Other students were out combing the streets to gather signatures on ridiculous petitions asking things like whether or not we should call yoga pants "tights" or "yoga pants" and other silly questions. People weren't sure how to respond--it often took them a second to realize it was a joke, when they did, they would usually sign and the student at the podium would ring a bell like they do in the grocery store when you donate, thank them profusely and then shred their signed petition right in front of the viewers.
Perfomance
Dr. Wendy Chase Lecturing on Ann Hamilton's Phora in the Bob Raushenberg gallery.
